Where Even Flowers Bloom
by Bibliograph
Summary: After travelling back in time to Ancient Egypt, Daisy finds herself at the mercy of cold-hearted Pharaoh Seto, who intends to use her as a pawn in his quest to secure the throne. Survival means playing his political game—but then Daisy sees the man beneath the crown. She isn't playing anymore. Not when it's her heart on the line and the future of the man she loves in jeopardy. S/OC
1. Chapter 1: Meeting Anzu

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 01:

"Meeting Anzu"

* * *

I'm not gonna lie... the door intimidated me. It was just a door, yeah, and there was no reason a simple little door should scare me, but as I stood in front of it I felt nerves jump inside my stomach like agitated grasshoppers. I took my key-card and swiped it, swallowing when I heard the lock disengage. The green light on the card panel glared like a watching eye. With mouth dry, I pushed the door open.

My roommate for the next three months stood by the window, and she was pretty. Not that it mattered—oh, hell, of course it mattered. This girl was really, really pretty, and my last bits of confidence weren't holding up very well under the flash of her blue eyes. She had a bob of rich brown hair, dusky skin, and—I already told you her eye color. Blue. Blue like an ocean. Damn, was she pretty!

Wait a minute. Blues eyes? My roommate was supposed to be Japanese, wasn't she? With my teak-brown hair and dull green eyes, I probably looked more Japanese than she did.

"Hi!" said the girl who might not actually be my roommate, after all. She strode toward me, bowed from the waist, then seemed to remember something. She thrust out her hand so I could shake it. "Hi, I'm Anzu Mazaki."

Well, that was certainly a Japanese name. "I'm Daisy Lachance," I said.

Anzu giggled. "Well, they warned me my roommate would be French," she said. "You have a pretty accent."

She didn't have an accent at all. Her English was gloriously perfect, just like the rest of her. She was a bit shorter than me, petite but strong. Next to her I felt ungainly and awkward. I flushed and tucked my hair behind my ear. "Are you really Japanese?" I heard myself asking, and when her smile faded I regretted my poor choice of words. "I mean, your English is just so good, and you have blue eyes—uh, I don't mean anything by that, I just—"

She laughed, smile returning. "My mom's from Germany," she said. She reached past me and snagged my suitcase. "Let's get you settled!"

Anzu hadn't unpacked yet, so the two of us spent the next hour putting our stuff away and getting to know one another. Anzu was half Japanese, which explained some of her unusual coloring, and she'd started learning English in school as a kid. When she was accepted by this dance program (the International Dance Academy Conference, which we just called the Academy) and learned she'd have a roommate, she got a tutor and tried to become fluent. Although the Academy selected students from around the world every year, which meant there really couldn't be a common language for such a diverse student body, English was the defacto option.

"How about you?" she asked. "Did you learn English in school?"

That answer was a bit complicated. "Yeah, but my dad is from America so I spent time there as a kid," I told her (there was more to it than that but we'd only just met; I didn't trust her enough to tell her everything about my tumultuous family life). "I lived with Mom growing up, so French is my native language, but I had to live in the States every summer so I'm fluent in that, too."

"Looks like we're both bilingual," Anzu said. She sighed, a dreamy look stealing over her features. "I wish I spoke French. It's such a romantic language."

"I'll teach you some French if you teach me Japanese," I offered.

We started discussing languages, then, and as we finished unpacking we segued into a discussion of dance. I figured since we were both in this program Anzu must be crazy about dance, but as we talked I realized she wasn't just crazy about it—she was obsessed. Grade A, first class obsessed. I mean, I was too, but as we discussed our favorite ballet dancers she showed an incredible knowledge of dancers both past and present. She had a favorite dancer (both male and female) for every decade of the past century, for crying out loud!

"I want to end up in New York," she confided. We sat on her bed, clutching pillows to our chests as we talked about our Dance Dreams (all dancers have those, I'm pretty sure). "I want to be on Broadway. I know most people here are ballet dancers but I just can't stick to one style, you know?"

"Oh, totally," I said. "That's why I applied for this program. We're learning so much of every style, so maybe I'll figure out what my best style is by the end of the classes."

My Dance Dream wasn't as concrete as hers. I knew I wanted to dance ballet for the rest of my life, but with what company and in what country I wasn't sure. That's why I was so eager to attend the Academy. Hopefully it could expand my horizons and point me in a good direction.

The Academy was held every year, and you had to apply to get in. I'd barely made the cut (in truth I'd been wait-listed, but Anzu didn't need to know that). I was ecstatic to be here, though, and what I lacked in formal training I hoped to augment with enthusiasm. Anzu needed no such bolstering, of course. When I asked for her dance background she provided a laundry list of competitions she'd won and classes she'd taken-way more than most 17 year olds I knew. She was incredibly impressive for someone her age. My own dance background wasn't nearly as diverse, hence my nerves when I arrived at the Academy and first met Anzu. I'd danced ballet all my life and I'd done some contemporary and modern, too, but I was woefully lacking in jazz. Anzu and I shared a love of hip-hop, I learned, and we'd both done some tap, but in the end I realized my roommate was probably way out of my dancing league.

...which is why I was so surprised when she hugged her pillow even tighter to her chest, knees coming up as she curled into a tight ball. Her bangs covered her eyes as her lips pressed into a tight line. She looked like she was about to cry.

"Daisy, I know we just met, but I need to tell someone-I'm scared," she said.

"Of what?" I asked. "Is it the performance?" At the end of the Academy we were to perform for recruiters from all sorts of dance companies, companies from all corners of the world who wanted to scout fresh talent. I knew I was nervous for that. Could the impeccably prepared Anzu be nervous, too? "I know it's intimidating to be seen by all those professionals, but-"

"It's...not that," she said. She uncurled a little, head turning toward our dorm room's window with its tightly drawn curtains. The look on her face spoke of pain, longing, and a sadness so profound I found myself at a loss for words. "It's this place."

"What, the Academy?"

"No. The location of it." Her shoulders slumped and she curled back into her protective ball. "They didn't announce it until a few months ago, after I'd agreed to be a student, but if I'd known where they were going to hold the Academy this year, I...well, I might not have come at all."

She clearly had a connection to this place. I figured she'd tell me about it but after nearly a minute of complete silence I got up and headed toward the window.

"I'm not going to pry," I said over my shoulder. "Tell me if you want to, or don't. But whatever problem you have with this place, just know I've got your back. OK?"

She didn't answer, nor did she uncurl from her protective ball, so I gripped the window's curtains and pulled them open. Insistent Egyptian sunlight poured through the window, bathing my face in radiant warmth. The city of Cairo bustled beneath a clear blue sky. As the light hit Anzu she finally uncurled, blue eyes blinking in the harsh illumination.

"My mother has a saying," I told Anzu as she joined me at the window. "It sounds way less cheesy in French, but she says not to fret if you get lost in the desert." I grinned my most cheerful grin, and Anzu returned it with hesitance—and maybe a little bit of hope. "Deserts aren't so bad. For in them there are place where even flowers bloom."

* * *

 _NOTES:_

 _Takes place post-series, after the ceremonial duel…hence Anzu's reluctance to come back to Egypt. But more on that later._

 _As stated in the story summary, this is a time travel romance with an OCxPriestSeto pairing. It's going to be a fairly slow story with a lot of fun (read: painful) romance, plus political intrigue, Ancient Egyptian goodness, and some action. Duel Monsters won't play a huge role, but magical creatures will._

 _Daisy is the protagonist, obviously. Hope you like her! You'll learn more about her as the story unfolds._

 _Disclaimer about Dance: I am not a dancer. Never have been, never will be. So all you dancers out there, PLEASE correct me if(when) I mess something up, and always feel free to give me suggestions. There's only so much information one can glean from YouTube tutorials and Wikipedia entries. ;)_

 _Reviews are always appreciated. I've written a few chapters of this fic ahead of time; you'll get consistent updates for a few weeks. I've also outlined the story completely, so I won't be at a loss for where it's going, and hopefully that means I'll be able to produce chapters quickly. Happy reading!_


	2. Chapter 2: Making Plans

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 02:

"Making Plans"

* * *

The Academy had us staying in a fairly nice hotel for the duration of the classes, which were held at a nearby dance studio. It was a short walk between the studio and the hotel, but even so I was glad to have Anzu with me during our morning commute. The Egyptian sun was hot and draining; her chipper attitude kept me preoccupied as I braved the daily heat. She didn't seem to mind it, herself. Used to it, she said. Japan had hotter summers than France.

The Academy worked us to the bone for the first month of our stay, and I mean that literally. My feet bled after each _en pointe_ class, calluses rubbing raw inside my stiff shoes, and my muscles felt shredded since they had us doing weight and cardio training along with our dance lessons. We had lessons six days a week in just about every style of dance, from classical ballet to modern hip-hip and niche styles like tap, swing, blues, and even Bollywood. Eventually we'd be sorted into specific dance styles as our strengths became clearer to the instructors, but for the time being we were to take a little bit of everything. That meant Anzu was in most of my classes since we were the same age and gender, and for this I was supremely grateful.

Anzu was, simply put, a friggin' awesome human being. She was kind, supportive, honest, and loyal, always ready to lend a helping hand or give someone an encouraging boost. It helped that she knew a couple of celebrities (some Japanese pro-gamers whose names sounded vaguely familiar—I've never been into card games) and was super pretty, but her kindness and personality were what really made her stand out. She became popular quickly, everyone clamoring to be her friend. I was a bit more awkward around people (grew up in a small town, didn't have many friends as a kid, blah blah blah) so I was grateful when Anzu readily took me under her wing and made sure I was included whenever we got free time to go sightseeing.

...so when she didn't tell me she was using one of our very few holidays (a three-day one!) to take a boat down the Nile to visit the Valley of the Kings outside of Luxor, I felt both betrayed and shocked. It wasn't like her not to include me.

I wasn't sure if I should bring it up or not. It was after our classes had ended for the day, and after walking back to the hotel, Anzu had gotten into the shower. While I waited for my turn in the bathroom, someone knocked on our door. A hotel clerk was delivering something for one of the residents. He passed me an envelope, one with just our room number and no name. When I opened it to see what it was, I found myself staring at a brochure and a single ticket for a three-day Nile river cruise, final destination Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. There was only one ticket. I put everything back in the envelope and put it on her bed. Was she going with other dancers in the program? I hadn't heard anything about an extended trip. I'd love to see the Valley of the Kings! We'd managed to take day trip to visit the Great Pyramids but that was pretty much all of the Ancient Egyptian culture I'd gotten to see since coming to Cairo. Dance came first, not sightseeing.

Adding to my irritable mood, I'd gotten bad news earlier that day. I'd had an evaluation with an Academy instructor, and she'd advised me against pursuing _en pointe_ ballet—at least exclusively pursuing it. She said my dancing had a rich emotional quality that would lend itself better to contemporary or modern dance. The quality was rare, she said, and it drew people to watching me, but she wasn't sure I'd measure up to other dancers who had better natural ballet technique or more formal technical training. I wasn't sure what to think of that, and I'd been wanting to discuss my evaluation with Anzu before I saw that ticket. Being told your lifelong dream would be an uphill battle wasn't easy to hear. I needed her supportive nature right then. But if she was planning a trip without me, did I matter to her? Would she even care about my plight?

I was sitting on my bed when I heard the shower turn off and the shower curtain hiss open. It took Anzu another ten minutes to come out of the bathroom. "All yours!" she chirped as she rubbed her hair with a towel.

"OK," I said. I picked up my change of clothes and headed for the bathroom, but halfway there I paused. "Hey, Anzu?"

"Yeah?"

"The front desk delivered something for you. I put it on your bed." I swallowed before admitting: "I opened it. They didn't put your name on it. I'm sorry."

She glanced at the envelope, frowned, and picked it up. When she glanced at the contents her eyes widened, and then she sighed. She put the tickets on her bedside table and sat down.

"I was almost hoping these wouldn't show up," she said with a wry smile.

"Are you going with Reina and all of them?" I asked, trying to keep it casual as I brought up some of Anzu's other friends.

She shook her head, and I'm ashamed to admit I felt a little relieved to know she wasn't spending time with them without me. "I'm going alone," she said. "I have an old friend in Luxor. She's meeting me down there."

"I didn't know you knew anyone in Egypt," I said.

She slung her towel around her shoulders. Her shoulders hunched, dejected. "I was hoping she wouldn't hear I was in this country," she said; the words came out with effort, as though she didn't enjoy speaking them. "I don't want to go down to Luxor, but I don't want to be rude, either. She bought me this ticket and everything."

We sat in silence. I wasn't one to pry, and it was rare for Anzu to keep secrets from me. Still, I knew this must have something to do with why she wasn't happy to be in Egypt. She'd alluded to being uncomfortable in this country when we'd first met. In the month-and-few-days I'd known her, she'd never brought it up again, and she'd never seemed uncomfortable with Egypt since. Was being in this country still bothering her?

"Would it help if I went with you?" I offered.

Her head jerked up, eyes wide and very blue.

"I mean, sorry to be presumptuous," I added quickly. "It's just...clearly whatever bothers you about Egypt has something to do with this friend of yours, or Luxor, or whatever. Maybe having a friend along would make it better. Or something?" I rubbed the back of my neck and laughed. "Or maybe I'm just clingy and will miss you if you leave for three days. Take your pick!"

Anzu didn't give me a yes or a no that night, nor did she tell me more about why she was reluctant to visit Luxor. She just thanked me for my offer and avoided the topic until we went to bed. But the next day, about an hour after classes ended, a hotel clerk came by our room with a delivery. Anzu left the envelope on my bed, and when I found it, I saw that it contained a ticket for a Nile River cruise—destination Luxor, and the Valley of the Kings.

* * *

 _NOTES:_

 _Any guesses as to who Anzu's ticket-giving friend in Luxor might be? You could win a virtual cookie! I make the best virtual cookies._

 _So…yeah. Daisy dances with a lot of heart but not a lot of technique, and feels badly about that. Fun._

 _And…not much else to say. But they're going to Luxor! What adventures await? You'll see soon enough!_

 _This chapter was posted at the same time as chapter 1 and chapter 3. Felt I should start off strong, I guess? Haha!_


	3. Chapter 3: Reaching Luxor

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 03:

"Reaching Luxor"

* * *

The boat left on Thursday evening, and we sailed down the Nile through the night until we reached Luxor. We came upon the city just as the sun rose. The dawn light bathed the city in a pale golden glow, making it shine like it was made of precious metal.

Luxor is a neat place. The modern part of the city is on the east bank of the Nile, and on the west bank sit the ruins of the ancients. The divide between the two halves is striking, and as we came upon Luxor in that watery morning light I realized I had travelled through time—in a metaphorical sense. Seeing such modernity juxtaposed with those ruins made me feel like the Nile was not a barrier of water, but of millennia, the future on one side and the past on the other. Anzu and I stood on the prow of the cruise ship in reverent silence. On the western shore I could make out some gigantic statues, their lines glowing as though lit from within by the rising sun. To the east glassy hotels and markets not yet open for the day sat quiet, waiting for people to leave their beds. The only sound came from the Nile water lapping at the boat's thick hull. I tipped back my head, inhaling deeply of the Nile's scent. Some parts of the river were dirty from industry and dense population, but here the water gleamed clean and clear. Reeds swayed by the shore. Through the silence an egret called, cry lonely amid the hush.

"It's lovely here," I said. I turned to Anzu. "I'm so glad—Anzu, are you OK?!"

Anzu was crying. She didn't sob, or shake, or even whimper. She just stood next to me with her hands on the boat's metal rail, knuckles white, tears dripping from her true-blue eyes. She didn't look sad—just blank, like she felt empty on the inside, like if I touched her I'd hear the ring of a hollow jar. When I touched her shoulder she flinched, and then she put her fingers to her cheek. They came away wet, and she looked confused.

"I'm... sorry," Anzu said, wiping the tears with her wrist. "I just... there are a lot of memories, here."

"Of course," I said. She accepted my hug when I offered it, but she didn't say anything more.

* * *

We got off the boat on the eastern side, where modern amenities awaited. Several people stood on the dock while we disembarked. Most of them appeared to be tour guides. They held signs with names on them and led people away when someone recognized whatever had been inscribed on the placards. Anzu bypassed these people, however, and made a beeline for a woman standing on the crowd's edge. I followed after, squeezing roughly between tourists (Anzu didn't slow down to wait for me) and got through just as Anzu and the woman bowed at one another in greeting. The woman was clearly Egyptian, with dark skin and dark hair. She wore a white robe with elaborate golden accessories, including a belt, wraps around locks of her hair, bangles, wrist cuffs, and anklets. She even had a golden tiara-thing with a green gem in the middle of her forehead, which I thought was too elaborate for daily casual wear (but what the hell do I know, anyway?). I hung back while Anzu greeted this woman, only stepping forward when Anzu gestured for me to join them.

"This is Ishizu Ishtar," Anzu said. "Ishizu, this is my roommate at the dance academy, Daisy Lachance."

"Pleased to meet you," I said. I stuck out my hand before remembering how Anzu had greeted Ishizu with a bow, but Ishizu took my hand in hers without a trace of hesitation. Her skin felt warm and dry, which made me self-conscious of my sweating palms. She looked just as composed as Anzu in this unbearable desert heat.

"Anzu has told me so much about you," Ishizu said with a tranquil smile. She had lovely features, strong and proud and feminine all at once. "I am glad she has a friend to rely on in this country."

"I'm happy to be that person," I said, and I grinned my most charming grin. "She is lovely. And I know you must be, too, since you're friends with her."

Ishizu laughed, sound as light as a springtime breeze. From there she led us off the dock to the street, where a van waited to take us...somewhere. I hadn't been told where yet. We wound up at an outdoor bazaar, where Ishizu recommended we eat a breakfast at a café. After refreshment we'd head across the river to the Valley of the Kings and Old Luxor for a private tour of the ruins. Ishizu had a special pass or something, which she explained while we looked over the menu and ordered food and coffee. Our waiter turned out to be Tunisian. He recognized my accent so I ordered for all of us in French. It felt good to speak my mother tongue after months of English.

Our food came quickly. I'd ordered a traditional Egyptian breakfast of _ful medames_ , pita bread, and a fried egg. Anzu just had coffee and a pastry. Ishizu didn't order anything because she'd already eaten. Still, despite having ordered the most food, I finished eating first and wound up sitting there while Ishizi and Anzu got caught up. They were talking about people I didn't know (Yugi, Jounouchi, Kaiba, Honda—people she'd told me about in passing who still didn't seem real to me) and I soon got bored.

Ishizu noticed. She smiled, reaching out to lightly touch my hand. "I apologize," she said. "We've been chatting away, and you must feel left out. Why don't you look through the bazaar for the time being?" She gestured at the square outside of the café, where vendors set up stalls to sell their wares. "This is a safe area. So long as you don't wander far, you should be fine."

I didn't need any more convincing. I got up, chugged the last of my coffee, and told them I'd be back in half an hour. Anzu looked relieved when I told her I'd be gone that long. I got the feeling she wanted to talk about Ishizu about the thing-that-must-not-be-spoken-of, which I still knew nothing about, other than how it had the power to make Anzu cry. It would be good for Anzu, getting the details off her chest. Healthy. I was happy to leave if talking to Ishizu alone would make her feel better.

Not many people perused the bazaar yet, given the early hour. It was mostly just me and other tourists walking through the network of vendor stalls. They sold some produce (jarred things like honey and jam) but most of them sold trinkets tourists would like—t-shirts about visiting Luxor, cartouche pendants that could be inscribed with words, postcards, mummy figurines, Egyptian cat statues, that sort of kitschy tourist stuff. This was definitely a tourist area, not a place where actual Luxor citizens spent their time. I felt a bit disappointed by that. I liked seeing how people lived, not canned tourist attractions meant to part me with my money.

True to the touristy-nature of this place, vendors battled for my attention at every turn. They called out to me, saying things like "pretty girl" and "lovely lady" in an appeal to my vanity. I tried to ignore them but several actually looped their arms through mine, brazen in their desire to make a sale. After only a few minutes I wanted to go back to Anzu and Ishizu, but when I headed toward the café and I saw them sitting at their table, I could tell by their expressions that I shouldn't interrupt. Anzu looked like she might cry again. Ishizu looked heartbroken, herself. I ducked between two vendors' booths and tried to make myself small, to keep out of sight so I wouldn't be accosted any more.

"Lost, young lady?"

The voice floated above the crowd, distinct but soft. Across the lane from me, sandwiched tight between two other stalls, sat an older woman. She had a rug laid out on the ground before her; it was covered in jewelry, mostly silver things with colorful beads. Grey wound through her dark hair and wrinkles surrounded her eyes, which were lined in thick black kohl—very Ancient-Egyptian-throwback. Probably part of her selling technique or something. She smiled at me, bemused, and her kind expression felt good after the greedy voiced of the other vendors. I looked both ways before crossing toward her. I knelt at the edge of her blanket and smiled.

"Not lost—just waiting," I said.

"Waiting," the woman repeated, speaking slowly as though savoring the word. She was probably my mom's age, or maybe a little older, but she was definitely younger than my grandmother back home. "I see. Waiting is good. It means you're open to change. To new experiences."

Leave it to a stranger to start waxing philosophical. She had a light accent, but I couldn't name where it was from. There was some modern Egyptian, yeah, but also some other stuff I couldn't place. That bothered me. I really liked languages. My mother worked for the UN as a translator, so foreign languages were spoken around my house a lot and I prided myself on being able to place an accent. Where was this woman from, exactly?

She didn't give me time to ask. She swept a hand over her blanket. "See anything you like?" she asked.

I glanced over her wares. It looked like real silver jewelry with turquoise and glass beads, but beads had never been my thing. I had more modern taste, favoring simple, sweeping lines in my jewelry instead of elaborate, colorful creations. I think she could tell I wasn't digging any of her items because she reached behind her and pulled out a swatch of thick cloth. She unfolded this atop her other pieces. Inside it lay more jewelry—a few pairs of gold earrings, chunky and big, some gold bangles, and a necklace.

That necklace...

"So that strikes you, does it?" the woman asked.

I reached out and traced my thumb across the necklace—or was it more like a collar, or a choker? It was a flat piece of hammered gold about the length of my hand, shaped in a gentle curve sort of like a boomerang. Holes punched on either end allowed a chunky gold chain to be attached. It caught my eye because in the center of the flat piece, a symbol had been inscribed. It was a flower with a small heart and lots of long, thin petals...a daisy. It was a daisy for sure. Or maybe it was a sun symbol or something, but whatever. It easily passed for my floral namesake.

How strange. What were the odds of that?

"You like that one, eh?" the woman said. She didn't sound surprised. In fact, she sounded pleased. She lifted the necklace and handed it to me. "Try it on?"

I did, fastening the chain around my neck. The golden plate rested just under my collarbone, hugging the curves of my chest like it had been molded to them. The woman passed a tarnished hand mirror to me. When I looked at the golden collar on my chest my heart skipped, breath catching as though someone had scared me.

"It's lovely on you," the woman said.

I put down the mirror and unfastened the necklace. There was no way something like this would be cheap enough for me to afford. My grandmother had given me money to spend on this trip but it wasn't much, and this thing looked like it might be made of real gold. It had luster too rich to be paint or whatever they used for fake gold.

As I put it down on the rug I saw that the piece had been inscribed with more than just a flower symbol. The back was covered in sigils and glyphs—no, these were specifically Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I'd seen Indiana Jones. I knew what hieroglyphics looked like even though I couldn't read them.

"It's funny," I told the woman. "This necklace has my name on it."

The woman's eyes widened. She reached out and snatched my hand up in hers. "Does it?" she asked, fingers warm and gentle around mine.

"Y-yeah," I said. I pulled my hand free and flipped over the necklace, pointing at the daisy. "My name is Daisy. So..."

The woman kept her hand out toward me, like she wanted to grab me again, but she didn't move. I sat still beneath her stare, which burned into me even more hotly than the overhead sun. Sweat beaded on my neck; I wiped it away.

"...fate."

The woman's lips barely moved when she spoke. I smiled, an anxious reflex, and then the woman rose to her knees. She picked up the necklace and, holding it by the chain, leaned toward me. I let her brush my long ponytail off my neck so she could fasten the necklace around my throat once again. I held very still, not sure what to do when touched by a total stranger. When she pulled away, her eyes glimmered—with wetness. For no reason I could see, the woman had begun to cry. One fat tear rolled down her cheek, moisture leaving a gleaming trail in its wake. I suppose I looked uncomfortable, because she smiled and wiped the tear away. No trace of her tears remained after she rubbed her eyes with forefinger and thumb.

"This is fate," she said, tone firm and steady. "I believe it, and so should you." She grinned, white teeth gleaming as she began folding up her rug and all the jewelry it contained. Her eyes glittered with emotions I couldn't name and can't begin to describe. Hundreds of feelings filled her eyes, all of them waging war with each other, but none of them won and made themselves available to me. "Take the necklace. Wear it well. And remember to be ready for change."

She stood up and turned away. I scrambled up after a moment of stunned silence. "But—but I haven't paid you!" I said.

She tossed her graying hair over her shoulder. "You've paid me more than you know," she said, and she walked into the crowd and vanished.

I went back to the cafe even though only twenty minutes had passed, unnerved by my experience. Ishizu and Anzu seemed unhappy to be interrupted, but I think my face looked funny because they didn't complain and Anzu asked, "Are you OK?"

I told her yes but said nothing else.

Ishizu noticed my necklace in the ensuing silence. "That's very pretty," she said, smiling. "I'm glad you found a souvenir."

"Me too," I said, but inside a feeling of disquiet weighed as heavy as the golden pendant on my collarbone.

* * *

NOTES:

Ah, so Ishizu was her friend. Nice.

MANY THANKS to jarjayes and girlofeverycolor for reviewing!

So what's with the necklace and the woman in the bazaar? We'll find out!

Also, quick note. I've visited Egypt before, and was accosted in a marketplace by an overeager vendor, so that's where a lot of this chapter comes from. It was a super fun visit; wish times weren't so troubled and I could go back. I truly loved visiting and hope I'm able to represent the country well.

Of course, soon we'll be in ANCIENT Egypt…hope I represent that well, too. Eager to get Daisy back in time! Will happen in another chapter or two. I believe in crafting a logical reason for her time-travel (no inexplicable or random trip to the past for her, no sir). This story has a fairly meticulous, complex plot coming up, so these early chapters are more important than they seem, I think.

Till next time!


	4. Chapter 4: Dodging Questions

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 04:

"Dodging Questions"

* * *

We crossed the Nile into Old Luxor a few hours later. Ishizu led us through the ruins herself, explaining the different dynasties and which temples had been built in which era. The city had been called Thebes once upon a time and was the city of the god Amon-Re—and that's pretty much all I remember of what she said. Most of the dates and names flew right over my head, but I recognized the names of deities when we passed the Temple to Hathor and a shrine to Horus. Everything lay in ruins, of course, but some buildings had managed to survive the test of time and maintain their grand shapes. The great hypostyle hall in the Precinct of Amun Re was especially impressive with its endless field of stone columns stretching a hundred feet above our heads. Gigantic statues of pharaohs guarded the entrance to the old city. Tourists took photos with the Ramesses II Colossus, grinning in the shadow of the long-dead king.

We walked around for about three hours, letting Ishizu lead the way the whole time. We stuck to the most populated areas, occasionally passing off-limits sections concealed behind gates and barriers (not to mention a few military-looking men with automatic rifles and dark blue uniforms). Ishizu had a talent for spinning stories and made sure to explain the origin of every ruin we passed, but not before giving us a brief Egyptian history lesson. Luxor had come into favor sometimes in the eleventh dynasty, but she summarized the preceding dynasties simply and quickly so we had proper historical context. She apologized, though, for not being able to tell us much about the second dynasty when she came to that part of the story.

"Very few relics remain of the second dynasty," she said. "It took place roughly 4,800 years ago. We know things about the second dynasty by contrasting the first and third dynasties. The changes between the two cultures help illuminate the years lost to obscurity. It seems there was some kind of upheaval that changed the seat of government from a place called Thinis to the city of Memphis, but the cause of that upheaval is left to speculation."

Anzu laughed at that, though I wasn't sure why she wore such a wry smile.

"What do you think caused it?" I asked Ishizu.

She smiled the same smile Anzu wore, wry and somehow secretive. "A civil war, is my best guess," she said. "And in other countries there was talk of a spreading fever—something we now suspect was a form of Green Fever. It's possible it travelled all the way to Egypt. Today we vaccinate against this disease, but in those times it would have devastated the population, setting the stage for a rival power to usurp Egypt's throne."

I recognized the name of that disease, because I had indeed been vaccinated against it before I came to Egypt. It was part of the vaccination cocktail I'd had to receive before being allowed into the country. The fever was easily treatable if caught in time, though they inoculated against it because the disease progressed quickly and it was better to just not get it in the first place. Still, I couldn't help but grimace at the irony. Something easily treatable today once wiped out an entire nation. I'm sure antibiotics would seem like magic to the pharaohs…

Ishizu smiled at me. "Coincidentally, the best natural treatment for Green Fever is a tincture made from the Egyptian daisy flower."

"Oh—but I didn't know daisies grew here!" I said, genuinely surprised. Daisies seemed more European to me, though I didn't have any real reason to believe that.

"You may yet see a daisy before the day is out," Ishizu said. "They were common flowers in the gardens of Ancient Egypt."

I'd never known that and said so, a little delighted to know my namesake had a connection to this ancient place. Ishizu's eyes lit up, and with a wave of her regal hand she bade us follow her down a path toward one of the cordoned-off areas. A uniformed man (with a really big, intimidating gun) stood by the barrier to the hidden relics, but to my immense surprise he waved us through without even searching us or asking to look at ID. Clearly Ishizu's reputation preceded her.

Behind the barrier lay a section of the ruins that hadn't been fully excavated. Caution tape and wire grid lines stretched across a large dirt section interrupted by lumps of stone; above flapped a blue tarp to keep away the wind and sun. We walked around this area toward a stone wall stretching maybe thirty feet long, top of it jagged with erosion. At the base of this wall someone had carved a long string of daisy flowers, stems of them long enough to touch the wall where it met the ground.

"Someone clearly tried to bring flowers inside this area of the temple," Ishizu explained. "They carved their own garden on the walls. We only recently uncovered this section of the structure, thinking it didn't extend so deep, and were delighted to see what we missed. Truly, the earth here holds many secrets."

As we left the area and passed the armed guard protecting it, it occurred to me that more than the earth held secrets, here. Ishizu guarded many, herself. Before we could make it back to the tourist-y section, I blurted: "So you must have high clearance, to be able to take us to a restricted dig site."

Ishizu didn't stop walking. She just smiled at me over her shoulder. "I have the proper permits, yes," she said. I sensed that was the only explanation the enigmatic woman cared to give.

* * *

After touring every inch of Old Luxor, Ishizu led us back to docks and the boat that had taken us to this side of the river. The boat had a small but luxurious cabin, and inside it waited a lunch of traditional Egyptian foods. Kafta, falafel, aish bread, hummus, and tons of vegetables grown in the rich Nile soil accompanied a roasted duck, one Ishizu said a friend of hers had caught himself. I tried everything and loved it all. Anzu, meanwhile, picked at her lunch with sullen jabs of her fork. Ishizu noticed, trying to engage Anzu in distracting conversation, but my friend didn't cheer up until I did a pratfall while getting up out of my chair. Ishizu giggled, too.

"You're a funny one, Daisy," she said. "Did you enjoy seeing Luxor?"

"Very much," I said as went to a side table and refilled my water glass. "It was wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing the Valley of the Kings—although I must say I'd be more excited if it wasn't so hot."

The room went very quiet. Anzu's fork stilled over her share of duck. Ishizu…well, she didn't make a face or anything, but her shoulders tensed so I knew I'd said something unfortunate. I covered by refilling both of their water glasses and asking what was next on the agenda. Both women seemed to come back to themselves, recovering from whatever awkward spell I'd cast, but the memory of their faces stayed with me. I needed to be more careful. I might not know what made Anzu so upset, but it wouldn't do to be the cause of her pain. I liked her too much for that.

"Next we will tour the museum," Ishizu said. Her eyes glittered with humor. "You'll be pleased to hear we will not visit the Valley of the Kings until the evening, once it has cooled off sufficiently."

"Oh—that's great news!" I said. Relief flooded me at the thought of avoiding the hot Egyptian sun. "I grew up by the coast, where there is always a breeze. I'm really not used to the heat."

Ishizu smiled. "I am glad you approve. And Daisy, I must say, your English is very good. I was worried we would have trouble speaking when Anzu said she intended to bring you along. I haven't spoken French in a very long time."

"I grew up speaking French and English, actually," I told her. "My father is American, and I used to spend summers with him in New York." I grinned, scratching the back of my neck out of embarrassment. "I also love that American TV show with Jennifer Aniston. You know— _Friends_? I watch that all the time, even when I'm in France. I think it helped keep my English fresh."

Anzu cocked her head to one side, lips shifting with a frown. "I didn't realize your father lived in New York. You said you spent time in America with him, but I assumed you were visiting his family…" She trailed off, clearly confused. She'd told me many times she wanted to dance in New York. Was she offended I hadn't told her I'd been there?

"Oh. Um." My face heated. I didn't need to see myself to know I resembled a tomato. My family history wasn't exactly pleasant, and I hadn't told Anzu much about my home life. I wasn't keeping it a secret on purpose, however. I just hated talking about my dad. Now that the attention was on him, though, I had to say something. "My parents divorced when I was five. He moved back to the States, and I lived with my mother and grandparents when I wasn't with him during the summer."

"Right—your grandparents," Anzu said, frown finally turning back into a smile. I'd told her a lot about them, so hopefully her curiosity had been assuaged. "Your grandfather is a veterinarian, right?"

"Yes, he is," I said, "and my grandmother is a midwife." I told them a bit about my upbringing, then. We had a house and some land by the sea, and a barn where Grand-père kept the animals he doctored. I'd lived on that land near a small seaside village until high school, when my mother had insisted I move with her to Paris for a better education.

"And what does your mother do?" Ishizu asked.

"She's a translator, government sector," I said.

"Lachance," Ishizu said, repeating my last name a few times, and then her dark eyes went bright. "Is her full name Veronique Lachance, by any chance?"

"Actually, yes," I said. I sat up a little straighter. "That's her name. How did you know?"

Ishizu smirked, satisfied. "She's been to Egypt several times, hasn't she, to translate trade law negotiation?"

I nodded, uneasy. "Have you met her?"

"Only once," she said. "My family has a hand in Egyptian politics." I wanted to ask her what that meant, exactly, not to mention what Ishizu's job actually was (you don't get private passes to Egyptian relics by being an average private citizen) but she changed the subject. "I remember your mother quite well. Translators are supposed to fade into the background, to give the illusion people are actually conversing instead of being laboriously translated. Veronique could all but disappear in plain sight, but when the occasion called for it, she could command a room with the charisma of a queen." Ishizu smiled at the memory. "Your mother is a formidable woman, Daisy."

I suppressed a wry laugh, because that was a massive understatement. "Yes—I suppose that's true." My mother was a perfectionistic typhoon trapped in a human body, but I didn't much want to talk about that, either.

Alas, talk about it we apparently would no matter my feelings on the matter. "I suppose that's why your grandparents helped raise you," Ishizu continued. "Your mother must travel quite a bit given her position. She is a highly sought-after translator, as I recall. Quite prominent in her field, yes?"

"Very prominent," I said. _Maman_ was barely ever home, she was so prominent, but there was no way to say that without sounding bitter, so I kept quiet. "She is a wonderful linguist."

"Now, I know you speak French and English, but do you speak anything else?"

Oh no. I knew where this was going. Still, even though lying would've ended the conversation, I defaulted to the truth before I could check myself (I'm bad at lying, which gets me into trouble more often than you'd think). "I'm conversational in Spanish, though not quite fluent, and Anzu has been teaching me Japanese." Each day she taught me a new word, and we'd managed to find charts of verb forms on the internet. "I'm enjoying it, and would love to visit Japan someday."

"She's really good at Japanese already," Anzu chimed in. When I started to protest, she scowled and mock-punched my shoulder. "Oh, don't be modest. You've memorized both katakana and hiragana, and your vocabulary gets better by the day."

"I'm still a beginner," I said.

"Yes, but you're learning quickly," she replied.

"It's no wonder you're a polyglot," Ishizu said.

Anzu frowned, unfamiliar with the English word. "Polyglot?"

"A person who speaks many languages," Ishizu clarified. Her smile was warm; clearly she thought she was paying me a compliment when she said, "Command of language must run in your blood, Daisy. Courtesy of your mother, no doubt."

I smiled, but I didn't agree verbally…mainly because my mother hadn't taught me anything about language growing up. She'd never been home long enough to teach me. My ability to speak both English and French was borne of hard work and study ( _lots_ of hard work and study; learning a new language isn't easy no matter who your mother is). Plus, I'd lived in the States for cumulative years, and English was a requirement in all French schools; my knowledge of English wasn't impressive in light of these facts, and my Spanish could use improvement. The kid who'd moved to my home town from Spain, in fact, assured me my accent was atrocious.

Still. It seemed any time I brought up my mother's profession, people credited my language skills to her, completely undermining the amount of work I'd put into my studies. I'd honed my English and started learning Spanish as a hobby to impress her when she finally came home from her travels, but she'd just corrected my conjugation and told me I needed a better dictionary. Nothing impressed my mother. She hadn't even blinked when I told her I'd been accepted into the Academy.

Ishizu spoke, startling me from my reverie. "And your father. What does he do?"

I remembered to lie, this time, because the truth wasn't worth getting into. "He's currently unemployed," I said. Before anyone could press for details, I changed the subject—well, I grabbed the subject and vengefully wrenched it in another direction, but whatever. "So, Ishizu. What do you do? This trip was very last minute, and Anzu hasn't had time to tell me how you met."

Ishizu and Anzu looked at one another for a moment. Anzu said nothing, eyes worried. But Ishizu smiled, patted Anzu's hand where it lay atop the table, and said: "We have an old friend in common, but we discovered we get along in our own right and have been friends ever since."

Anzu relaxed after Ishizu spoke. She grabbed her fork and began picking at her duck again. Clearly she hadn't been keen on telling me how she and Ishizu met. A spike of annoyance pierced my gut. They'd grilled me about my home life but couldn't tell me anything about their history? How unfair.

Before I could express how I felt, or even subtly fish for information, a man in a suit entered the cabin and murmured something in Ishizu's ear. The woman frowned, rose, and bowed to us.

"I apologize," she said, "but I need to take care of something. A security issue concerning some pieces of antiquity has arisen."

Anzu's fork fell against her plate with a clatter, falling from her limp fingers like a guillotine. "What kind of security issue?" she said. Her tone thrummed with an undercurrent of panic. "Is it the ceremonial—?"

"Nothing like that," Ishizu assured her, voice snapping to cut Anzu off (interesting—so they _were_ hiding things from me). "Thieves have been targeting museums and research groups, stealing artifacts—all gold artifacts, and some stone work." Her reassuring look faded into one of apprehension. "We do not know what they're after. They often break into museums and ignore the most valuable items in favor of small trinkets. Clearly they seek something specific."

"And these thieves are _here_?" I asked. Alarm made the hair on my nape prickle; I tossed the auburn strands over my shoulder in agitation. "Is it safe for us to be in this area?"

"You are perfectly safe so long as you stay with me and my employees," she said, voice pitched low like she wanted to soothe a spooked horse. _Grand-père_ used that tone when working with skittish animals, but he knew better than to use that patronizing tone on people. Ishizu's words set my teeth on edge. She gestured toward the couches under the cabin's wide windows. "Please, finish your meal. If you'd like, you may rest until I return."

We told her we would, and then Ishizu left. Anzu and I sat in silence for a few moments.

"Look," I said, but when she turned her guileless blue eyes my way, the words died. "Um…"

"What is it, Daisy?" she asked.

I hesitated. "Anzu…I know you're hiding things from me."

She looked away, down at her lap so her hair fell over her eyes. I didn't like seeing her so sad, so I placed my hand over hers. She looked back up at me with a small smile.

"I'm not mad," I said. "You are allowed to keep your secrets. I know I've kept mine. But just tell me one thing. Is Ishizu a good person?" When Anzu looked confused, I added: "She's involved in the government, clearly, and has access to restricted sites. Still, I have no idea what she does for a living, nor if her connections are even legal. And every time I try to ask, she dodges the question." I took a deep breath as understanding crept into Anzu's eyes. "So. Is she a good person? I would like very much to know."

"Yes," was Anzu's immediate, emphatic answer. "Yes, she's a good person. I know she's mysterious, but she's trustworthy." She swallowed, her pale throat moving. "She helped a friend of mine, Yugi, with the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his life. She supported me and the rest of his friends throughout the ordeal, too. I owe her a lot."

That wasn't enough to quell my curiosity—in fact, it raised a lot more questions about this supposed ordeal and Yugi's role in Anzu's life. As far as I knew, Yugi was Anzu's long-time friend and potential boyfriend-love-interest-person-thing. Anzu claimed things between her and Yugi were complicated. She said they'd been friends for so long that the transition into romance felt strange, and furthermore, she'd once had an unrequited crush on a cousin of Yugi's (a cousin who no longer lived in Japan, apparently, and wasn't amenable to a long-distance relationship). What was Yugi's ordeal, and what did it have to do with Egypt and Ishizu?

I gave myself a mental shake, putting those thoughts out of my head. Curious though I was about Yugi, Anzu's words were more than enough to put my misgivings regarding Ishizu (mostly) to rest. Anzu was a good person, and trustworthy, so if she said Ishizu was all right…

I sat back in my chair, tightness in my shoulders loosening somewhat. "If you vouch for her, then I won't ask any more questions," I said.

Anzu looked relieved. "Thanks, Daisy. I'm so sorry to keep you in the dark, but…I guess it's just not my story to tell."

"I understand," I said, because I did. Some secrets just aren't yours to divulge. I wouldn't force Anzu into telling me more than she was comfortable.

"Thank you, Daisy," she said, and I was relieved to see her smile. "You're a good friend."

Mind at ease, I got up and flopped onto the couch, relaxing amid the thick cushions and soft pillows. People in Egypt (most countries in hot parts of the world, really) tended to take a _siesta_ after lunch, and in my province in France the midday nap was also customary. I looked forward to my daily doze, and usually Anzu did, too. Today, though, she claimed she wasn't tired. She sat by the window opposite me, chin on her hand, and stared out the window toward Old Luxor. When I asked if she intended to sleep, she shook her head.

"No, but you should," she told me. Her smile, though small, held true warmth. "I'll wake you in an hour."

Part of me wanted to stay up with her, but my eyes soon grew heavy. The water lapping at the hull of the boat created a lulling hush, and as my lids fluttered close, I heard Anzu breathe a heavy, morose sigh.

* * *

 _NOTES:_

" _Green Fever" is a disease I made up, and it will come into play again at some point. Just FYI in case anyone got curious. I didn't, however, make up daisies in Ancient Egypt. They were common in that region at that time, surprisingly enough._

 _So there are thieves afoot. Interesting._

 _Siestas are a thing in most hot countries, so…yeah. Apparently it's common in the rural parts of France, too. Neat!_

 _We learned more about Daisy's background, which is nice. Her mother is a tyrant and her father…well, clearly there's a story there._

 _The "had an unrequited crush on Yugi's cousin" thing is how I imagine Anzu would explain her relationship with Atem to outsiders. In the manga she develops a crush on him without knowing he lives in Yugi's body (she gets blindfolded a lot for whatever reason) and I feel those feelings would complicate her relationship with Yugi after Atem goes to the afterlife._

 _She can't exactly say she was in love with the soul of an ancient pharaoh who happened to live in her best friend's body, but the pharaoh doesn't live there anymore, and the host body (Yugi) has a crush on her, but when she looks at Yugi maybe she still sees Atem…_

 _Anyway, yeah. I feel Anzu would want to talk about her predicament with a friend, but the situation is so unbelievable to outsiders, she'd have to fabricate an alternative story so she can talk about it without being labeled delusional. Hence the cousin story. Let me know if that makes sense!_

 _Next chapter is going to be super exciting and stuff. Stay tuned! It's mostly written and should come out within the week._

 _Reviews appreciated. Many thanks to those who commented on the last chapter! Jarjayes and Lottielue1, you rock!_


	5. Chapter 5: Dodging Bullets

_Warnings: Gun violence._

* * *

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 05:

"Dodging Bullets"

* * *

Next stop was the museum, an air-conditioned building holding some of the more delicate relics of days past. I enjoyed the feel of the A/C wafting over my skin as we progressed through the maze of rooms. Ishizu had a soothing voice, her explanations of the relics both practiced and unhurried. I was still sleepy from my nap, but I managed to wake up a bit when we walked past a large stone tablet showing an image of three dancers. They stood in a group, hands over their heads, adorned with beads and elaborate headdresses. They wore little clothing apart from fringed belts at the waist.

"Dancers often wore little clothing," Ishizu told us, "though it depended on the area, the year, and the type of dance." She pointed at their hair, which hung long and black with a straight part down the middle. Strands by the dancer's faces had been bound up twin tails lying atop their chests. "Most dancers wore their hair in that style—the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of a ballerina's chignon, I suppose?"

I laughed, delighted at the notion. "Yes, it seems so!"

Ishizu spent a minute telling us about the different types of dances, most having to do with religious rites. I was surprised to learn the upper class rarely, if ever, danced amongst themselves. They mostly hired dancers as entertainment. Dancing was regarded as a privilege of the common people. The pharaoh, however, was expected to know a handful of dances for religious ceremonies, which was sort of cool. Still, it disturbed me to think the most powerful members of this ancient society didn't enjoy dancing. I couldn't imagine my life without it.

I think I may have smiled, then, because Anzu quirked an eyebrow at me. "Daisy, what are you thinking?"

"Oh, nothing," I said, but then I giggled. "Just realizing if I lived back then, I'd have to be a commoner. I couldn't stand not dancing, you know?"

"You've found your passion," Ishizu said in an approving tone. "Both of you have. Some go through life without one. You are blessed to have found your calling so early."

From there we continued the tour, and when we found ourselves standing near the museum entrance about an hour later, another suited man approached us. He spoke to Ishizu in the local language, and at his words she nodded. Then she turned to us.

"Please. I have arranged a special treat for you both. If you'd follow me—"

She led us through a nearby door obscured by a decorative potted palm. The door opened onto a long hallway lined with more doors. No relics filled the space, so I think we were in the sort of "backstage" portion of the museum. Ishizu confirmed my feelings when she led us to a wide metal door and pulled a keycard from her sleeve. She swiped it through a card reader, and after a green light appeared below the card reader, the door swung open. Inside lay a large room, white walls lined with dozens of glass-fronted cabinets. They contained myriad artifacts, from vases to jewelry to knives to scrolls, all gleaming like they'd been recently cleaned. In the middle of the space lay a huge stone tablet, maybe ten feet tall and five feet across like a giant's forgotten dinner table. Concrete blocks held the slab about three feet off the ground.

"Our uncatalogued collection," Ishizu said as she led us toward the cases. "Many of these pieces will not be put on display for years—not until we've researched them thoroughly."

Anzu squinted at a pair of lapis earrings, chips of ore surrounded by thick gold. "So pretty!"

Ishizu said, "Those belonged to…"

I didn't really care who they belonged to, to be honest. I liked looking at everything, but the names and dates all blurred together. History had never been my strong suit; I knew I wouldn't retain half of what Ishizu said. I walked ahead of them, completing a circuit around the room as I looked at the cases one by one. Most contained jewelry, pottery, weapons, and fragments of stone inscribed with hieroglyphics. I suppose this reflects how uneducated I am on history, but it all looked more or less the same to me. Anzu seemed to be engrossed by Ishizu's history lesson, though, so I made another lap around the room before getting utterly bored and taking a look at the stone tablet in the center of the space.

The tablet was rectangle of golden stone with rounded edges, maybe two feet thick. Its edges were even and well-chiseled, not showing any chipping or signs of age. Despite its well-preserved status, the tablet, much to my chagrin, was just as boring as the rest of the collection. It's not like I could read the hieroglyphics covering the stone. Still, I studied the tablet for a few minutes, hoping it would provide me with some type of distraction—oh!

My eyes widened when I saw the symbol etched into the rock, sandwiched tight between a cartouche name and a few other signs. The glyph looked like the same symbol on my necklace, a little circle surrounded by long, thin petals: a crude daisy flower. When I leaned in for a closer look, I realized the symbol appeared in a few other places, too, scattered across the face of the stone amid the other hieroglyphics. I grinned in spite of myself. Ishizu had been right about me seeing a few daisies before the day was out…

"This tablet represents quite the mystery," Ishizu said from behind me.

I turned to her. She tucked her hands into the sleeves of her white robe as she bent over the slab. Her hair fell in a dark curtain by her face, glossy like a raven's wing. Anzu followed suit, staring intently at the writing on the stone.

"It hails from the mysterious second dynasty," Ishizu said. Her eyes flickered to Anzu for whatever reason. "That makes it very valuable, as relatively little is known about that time period."

Anzu brushed her short brown hair out of her eyes and studied the slab with renewed interest. She reached out as if to touch the stone, but she snatched back her hand at the last second with a mild blush.

"The tablet outlines the instructions of an ancient spell," Ishizu said. "A summoning ritual, of sorts."

"Summoning?" Anzu said. "You mean like the Shadow—"

She bit off her words before she could finish, and then she glanced at me. Clearly she'd said something she wasn't supposed to, if her scarlet cheeks were any indication. Anzu was pretty when she blushed, but she only ever did that when she was hiding something.

Ishizu, however, seemed less prone to secret-keeping. "Yes, Anzu," she said. "Much like the Shadow Games of legend."

"What are Shadow Games?" I asked.

"It's not widely known, but Egyptian texts speak of an ancient magic used by pharaohs and their followers," Ishizu explained in a smooth tour-guide-voice. "According to legend, ancient sorcerers summoned monsters from another realm to fight their battles. These duels were called Shadow Games, and they were used to control the fate of the kingdom—or so the fables go." She chuckled, sound low and rich. "They are just stories, of course."

"Of course," Anzu agreed. "Just stories." She rubbed the back of her neck…something she only did when nervous. Interesting. Why did these legends make her so anxious? "So, you said this tablet has a spell on it?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," said Ishizu. "It contains a summoning ritual, but the creature being summoned isn't recorded anywhere else in the texts about the Shadow Games."

"A mystery monster…" Anzu said, trailing off. Her eyes held a far-away look, like her spirit had left the room.

"Yes. Archeologists are, to be frank, stumped," said Ishizu. "They have no idea what this tablet was used for, as no others like it have been found." She pointed at one of the cartouche symbols. "The creature being summoned is called 'Hathnodjmet,' which translates to 'Beloved of Hathor.'" Ishizu looked troubled by that, though I couldn't imagine why. "In fact, the entire tablet appeals to Hathor to aid this summoning. We've never seen anything quite like it, as the goddess Hathor had never prior been linked to the Shadow Games."

I frowned. This wasn't a very interesting topic, to be completely honest. Ancient Egypt was cool and stuff, but it wasn't an object of fascination for me—not the way it seemed to be a fascination for Anzu. She drank down every one of Ishizu's words like she starved for them. Why was she so captivated by this place, anyway? Anzu had hinted she possessed ties to this country, but to this day she hadn't divulged the exact nature of said ties. These Shadow Games in particular seemed to excite her. She chatted animatedly with Ishizu about them for many long minutes. I stood there in silence, watching their exchange, until eventually Ishizu caught my eye. I think she saw the boredom on my face because she very quickly changed the subject.

"I think it's an appropriate time for dinner, if you're hungry," Ishizu told us. She gestured toward the door, back the way we'd come. "Shall we?"

That sounded great to me. I lead the way out of the room, practically skipping down the long hallway toward the museum's marble antechamber. I beat Anzu and Ishizu there and wound up standing in the large, echoing room by myself. Groups of tourists milled about, clutching pamphlets and staring in wide-eyed fascination at the relics behind their glass cases. A group of men in suits stood near the doors, all wearing dark sunglasses below their heads of matching, buzz-cut hair.

Odd. Sunglasses indoors?

I took another step into the foyer and felt heat on my hair. Sunlight trickled in from the skylights overhead. I tilted back my face and drank in the warmth. I hadn't realized how cold the A/C was until I felt the balmy Egyptian sun on my skin. Maybe those men and their sunglasses weren't so odd, after all. The sun reflected off the slick marble floor in a hot white glare.

"Daisy!"

I turned just as Ishizu and Anzu exited the door. It clicked shut behind them as Ishizu slowed to a stop. Anzu did likewise; we stood in a tight little knot by the door, my back to the foyer at large.

"You're very light on your feet, scampering off like that," Ishizu said—but then she paused, eyes catching wide and surprised on something over my shoulder.

That's about the time the gun went off.

I didn't see the gun. I didn't even see who held it. One second the museum's entry chamber echoed with passing feet and murmured conversation, the next a volley of pop-pop-pops reverberated through the room. Several people screamed, wordless cries of surprise and terror ripping from their throats, and then the stone wall to Ishizu's right erupted with dust. Chips of stone ricocheted from the crater left by the bullet's impact, peppering my face and chest with pebbles. I shrieked, hands coming up to ward the stone away, but then another set of shots rang out and the wall exploded again.

Something glanced off my scalp. My head lurched atop my neck. I was in pain for just a moment before a sense of spreading numbness enveloped my scalp and eyes.

"Get down!" Ishizu screamed.

I didn't listen to her—not exactly. I did fall to the floor, yes, but only because my knees had ceased to hold steady. I shut my eyes because the blurry world was an unbearable riot of color and sound, and my head spun, and looking at anything made my stomach heave like a wave-tossed ship—

"Quickly—in here!"

Hands grasped my shoulders and arms, pulling me forward along the floor. I somehow got my knees under me, moaning when the shock of rising sent a spike of nausea twisting through my gut. Shots rang out from behind me (or was it above me?) as I crawled across the floor, and then I heard a door shut and someone pushed me so I sat while leaning against a wall. Breath rattled in my chest, every cool inhalation making the nausea intensify.

A hand slapped lightly at my face. "Daisy!" came Anzu's panicked voice. "Daisy, hey, hey—can you hear me? Are you OK?!"

I moaned and jerked my cheek away from her hand. Getting slapped didn't help the pressure rising behind my eyes. If anything, it just made it worse. The world spun around me like a homicidal carousel.

"She's bleeding!" Anzu said. Her hand closed around my jaw, tilting my face up. "Daisy, look at me!"

Her words, spoke in lightly accented but very firm English, were difficult to grasp. Somehow I managed to understand her, though, and with a surge of valiant effort I cracked open one of my eyes. My vision had taken on a distinctly reddish hue, like I wore a pair of those fabled rose-colored glasses so often mentioned in song. Anzu stared at me through petrified blue eyes dyed purple in my red haze, cheeks flushed with exertion and fear. Ishizu knelt behind her, features only slightly more composed.

"I can't see. Blurry," I tried to say, but the words came out in French: " _Ne peut…pas voir. Floue."_

"Concussed," Ishizu muttered. She dipped a hand into her sleeve, producing the keycard she'd used to access the secret antiquity room. "Anzu, take this. Go back to the archival room and make her comfortable. Do not leave until I come for you, and let no one inside unless it's me. Do you understand?"

A loud bang, muffled but distinct, made all three of us flinch (though my reaction was comically delayed given I had a massive head wound, of course). Another volley of shots sounded from the other side of the door. The firefight was ongoing, it seemed. Even my addled state, I knew that wasn't good.

Anzu pocketed the cardkey. "OK, fine—but what about you?" she asked Ishizu, blue eyes aflame with purpose...and a fair bit of worry for her friend. "Where will you go? What will you do?"

"This is my museum," Ishizu said. She raised her jaw, and suddenly the forehead jewel and gold ornaments she wore didn't seem ostentatious at all. She was every inch a queen just then, regal and proud and deserving of the crown adorning her imperiously inclined head. "I will not let these thieves destroy that which I have worked so hard to glorify." She stood and squared her shoulders. "Do not worry about me, Anzu—just go!"

There was no arguing with a queen. Head lolling, fighting the instinct to purge my stomach of the last vestiges of my lunch, I remained impassive as Anzu wrapped an arm around my waist and hefted me to my feet. I leaned heavily upon her, arm draped across her shoulders, and let her guide me away from the gunfire still echoing down the hall.

* * *

 _NOTES:_

 _Well, here we see some action. Ancient Egypt is SO CLOSE! Eager to get there._

 _Thank you VERY much, jarjayes, for reviewing the previous chapter. So appreciate the support!_


	6. Chapter 6: Anzu

Warnings: A bit of blood.

* * *

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 06:

"Anzu"

* * *

Anzu wasn't a weak person. She'd lived through more crises—supernatural or otherwise—than could fill a dozen novels. So when the museum erupted with gunfire and Daisy fell to the floor with a bleeding temple, it had taken Anzu only a moment to shrug off her fright and analyze the situation. Ishizu held her composure, too, helping drag Daisy out of harm's way and back into the antiquity center. Anzu hadn't wanted Ishizu to go back into the fray (good in a crisis Anzu may be, but she likes company when times get tough) but there was no arguing with the Tombkeeper. What Ishizu wanted, Ishizu got, and Anzu could only watch her go with heavy heart before hauling Daisy down the corridor.

Hopefully she'd see Ishizu again. Those men in the black suits—the ones who had fired upon the museum's security station—hadn't looked like the type to take prisoners.

Daisy still had enough wits about her to stand upright and stumble down the hall, but if Anzu hadn't been there, the girl would've fallen over like a sack of badly-packed potatoes. Luckily Anzu had done enough yoga in her life to maintain her balance while juggling both her nigh-unconscious friend and the archive room's keycard. Daisy moaned, voice resonating with pain, as Anzu dragged her into the room and kicked the door shut in their wake. The heavy metal panel sunk into the frame with an audible click, locking firmly into place. Anzu smiled. Good. They were safe at last.

… _now_ what the heck were they supposed to do?

Clearly Daisy took priority. A chip of marble had cut her temple open; blood trickled down her cheek and jaw, staining the fabric of her shirt dark brown. They needed to stop the bleeding, and fast. Daisy should probably lie down. Should Anzu put Daisy on the floor or—?

Daisy lurched away from Anzu, arm slipping off the Japanese girl's neck. "Daisy, what are you—?" Anzu asked, but Daisy had cupped her face in both hands and wobbled a few steps ahead. Her unsteady feet carried her halfway across the room, directly toward—

"Daisy, I don't think you should touch that!" Anzu yelped.

It was too late, though. Daisy careened into the stone tablet, the one about the Shadow Games Ishizu had shown them. Then the girl turned, back pressing tight to the stone, and hopped up onto the tablet like it was a doctor's examination table. With a moan she flopped across the rock, laying on it on her back with knees dangling over the edge.

Oh, crap. This wasn't good—but a glance around the room revealed there weren't many alternatives. The room didn't have furniture, space reserved for glass cases and stone statues. The tablet was the closest thing to a chair in the whole place, and now that Daisy was up there, Anzu couldn't fathom relocating the poor girl to the floor. Daisy had been through enough for one day, Anzu decided. After all, Daisy hadn't signed up for getting shot at. She'd just signed up for a tour of Luxor.

"Sorry, Ishizu," Anzu muttered. Then, to Daisy, she tried to crack a joke: "Try not to bleed on the rock too much, OK?"

Daisy lifted a hand and gave Anzu a thumbs-up without lifting her head; even in pain and while concussed, Daisy was a goofball. Anzu giggled, but the laugh sounded too close to hysteria for comfort. She smothered the sound and went to Daisy, lifting the girl's feet by the ankles and shoving so she could make Daisy lie down on the slab. Then Anzu stripped off her t-shirt (luckily she'd worn a tank top underneath) and wadded it into a ball so she could stem the blood flowing from Daisy's temple.

Daisy didn't look too good. As part of the whole supernatural-disaster-every-other-week package Anzu signed up for when she became Yugi's friend, she'd seen her fair share of concussions. Daisy's looked to be a bad one. Her auburn hair had gone dark with matted blood; the girl's heart-shaped face gleamed with a layer of sweat. Her eyes, normally a bright and merry green that danced with perpetual humor, were screwed up so tight Anzu couldn't even see Daisy's lashes. She stroked Daisy's brow with her fingertips, murmuring comforts as best she could.

"I'm so sorry," she said when Daisy grimaced. "I dragged you here, and look where it got you. If I hadn't been so selfish, wanting a friend to come with me, this never would have—"

Anzu bit back a sob, blinking to clear the tears from her stinging eyes. She'd come to Luxor to visit the ruins of the Shrine of the Millennium Stone, truth be told, for reasons that were purely selfish. She wanted to try to contact Atem one last time, if such a thing were even possible, to see if she could bid him the proper goodbye she felt she'd never given, free herself so she could move on with her life—and then this had happened. Ishizu was supposed to take Anzu to the ruins of the duel site at midnight, after Daisy had gone to bed. Fat chance of that happening now…

No. Don't think like that. Anzu mentally admonished herself for placing her own needs before Ishizu's and Daisy's. Now was not the time to feel sorry for herself. She needed to keep alert, figure out how she could help Ishizu weather this crisis—but how could she help from inside a locked room. It wasn't like Anzu to abandon a friend in need. Every last one of her instincts screamed at her to leave the room, to go see if she could help Ishizu somehow—

Daisy groaned, hand lifting off the slab. She pressed the heel of her palm into her eye socket before heaving a massive sigh and going limp. Her hand slapped against the stone slab with a smack, boneless as a gutted fish. Alarm spiked through Anzu's gut when Daisy's head lolled to one side, features smoothing out of their pained expression and into blank, pale stillness.

"Daisy!" Anzu said. She slapped at Daisy's face, trying to wake the other girl, but Daisy didn't even flinch at Anzu's touch. "Hey—wake up!"

But Daisy wouldn't wake up, not even when Anzu tugged at her hair and all but screamed in her ear. Panicked, Anzu lay her head on Daisy's chest, focusing on stilling her own heartbeat so she could search for Daisy's pulse. When she eventually heard the steady thump beneath Daisy's ribs, relief's cool rush flooded Anzu's body like a soothing wind. So Daisy was alive, then—just sleeping. Sleeping wasn't good when you had a head injury, but at least Daisy wasn't dead. Anzu delicately peeled the shirt away from Daisy's head and was pleased to see a clot of blood decorating the wound. Daisy's bleeding had stopped. This was good news.

Anzu looked over her shoulder at the door. The metal panel, sleek and smooth, stared at her like a watching eye. Taking a deep breath, Anzu closed her eyes. Try though she might, she couldn't hear anything from the other side of the door—no gunshots, no screams, no running feet.

Question was…was that silence a good thing, or a bad thing?

Anzu looked at Daisy's pale face, bloody yet serene, and then back at the door. Daisy was safe in here, and since Anzu wasn't a medic, it's not like she could do anything for the other girl. Ishizu, meanwhile, fought an unknown battle, and could potentially use Anzu's help. Anzu hated feeling useless, hated feeling like a child unable to help the adults with their more important problems…but leaving Daisy wasn't wise. She'd have to stay here and keep watch, wait patiently for Ishizu to come back and say the coast was clear—

No.

Much as she knew leaving Daisy was a bad idea, in the end, Anzu's friendship with Ishizu couldn't be denied. What if Ishizu was hurt, or in trouble? Anzu could creep through the hallways, find Ishizu, and surprise the enemy with her unforeseen presence. No one was expecting her to come to Ishizu's aid. She had the element of surprise on her side.

"Sorry, Daisy, but I can't sit still," Anzu murmured. She stroked Daisy's impassive brow with shaking fingertips. "Can't leave Ishizu by herself. But I'll be back soon, I promise!"

She took a minute to arrange Daisy' limbs into a more comfortable position, wrap the shirt around Daisy's head to keep the wound from opening, and smooth the sleeping girl's hair. Then, with one final apology, she went to the door and locked it tight behind her.

"I'll be back," Anzu whispered before marching off down the hall. "I'll be back just as soon as I find Ishizu."

And that was true. Anzu would find Ishizu, unharmed, and the pair would eventually come back for Daisy once the thieves had been apprehended.

Too late, though.

By the time they returned, Daisy would already be gone.

* * *

As the door clicked shut behind Anzu, Daisy moaned. She rolled in her sleep, curling into a ball on her side. Her bleeding temple pressed against the stone slab, smearing the rock with her blood. Hand shaking, mind gripped tight by persistent unconsciousness, Daisy clasped her bloody hand around her necklace. She was looking for comfort, even if her waking mind didn't know it.

In response, the necklace took on a bright blue glow. Soon Daisy, her necklace, and the stone tablet shined with the same brilliant light—and then they disappeared with a flash of electric illumination.

Naught remained but Daisy's bloody clothing, lying in a pile on the floor.

* * *

 _NOTES:_

 _Decided to switch up the perspective for this chapter. I plan on doing some POV experiments in this fic. I usually write in first person, past tense, for the entire length of a story, but…I feel like challenging myself! I'm really out of practice with third person. Time to get back into shape! We'll be back to Daisy's perspective very soon, though._

 _I feel like Anzu is really nice and smart, but also a bit brash, which is why I could see her leaving Daisy behind in a locked room while she tried to help another friend. There was nothing more she could do for Daisy, so…Anzu is a pragmatist, when you get down to it._

 _And next chapter we finally enter the ancient past. Yay!_

 _MANY THANKS to the two guest reviewers who each reviewed all five of the previous chapters. I so, SO appreciate your support!_


	7. Chapter 7: Meresankh

Warnings: None

* * *

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 07:

"Meresankh"

* * *

Meresankh despised laundry day. It required gathering the household linen, bundling it up atop her head, and trekking through town to the banks of the Nile. Then she had to unload her burden, stretch it upon the rocks, and begin the arduous process of washing each bit of cloth inch by inch until her hands went raw. Many of the other women didn't mind laundry. It meant gathering together in the sunshine and gossiping, trading household tips and juicy secrets alike. Meresankh did not despise that aspect of laundry day, but the raw fingers she could live without.

Which is why Meresankh was grateful when, midway through the season of _Akhet_ , during the month of _Ka-ḥr-ka_ when the Nile reached its highest point of the inundation cycle, she found herself at the center of a most interesting incident.

Well, _she_ called it an incident. Others—the more fancifully inclined—called it a miracle.

* * *

Meresankh woke that morning in a dark mood. She shaved her head in front of a piece of bronze shined to a mirror polish, then donned her favorite palm fiber wig with steady hands. It was laundry day, and she wanted to keep the sun off her scalp. The other women would doubtless be bare-headed, but she didn't much care. She'd always been the odd duck among them. Let them snicker behind her back at this, too. She would not pay them any mind.

Tuhmose greeted her when she left her quarters and entered the kitchen, a square room with a window cut in the white plaster of the wall. Reed mats covered the floor; herbs hung in bunches from the rafters overhead. Meresankh was surprised to see Tuhmose up this early. She typically woke first and cooked breakfast for the old man. That was her duty, after all. He sat on a stool by the stove of mud and stones, the one he'd built for her in the corner two summers previous, fanning the smoke back into the chimney where it belonged. They needed to repair the chimney; a crack in its foundation made the smoke behave oddly. Meresankh made a mental note to contact the city's head stoneworker after she finished the laundry. Surely they would know how to fix it.

"Good morning, child," Tuhmose said. He gestured at the stove and the fire crackling beneath. "I've set a duck to roast."

"This is rare," Meresankh remarked. She went to the larder and selected a gourd, two loaves of bread, and other vegetables, which she began to prepare to accompany the duck. "You, waking before me? Did you have bad dreams?"

Tuhmose smirked. "No. I have an emergency order to fill. A favor, for an old friend."

Meresankh raised an eyebrow. "I did not hear the forge being lit last night."

Tuhmose coughed into his fist. "Ah, yes. That. That still needs to happen."

She couldn't help but roll her eyes. Tuhmose might be the most respected goldsmith in all of Egypt, having served hundreds of contracts for the Pharaohs and the advisors thereof while living in Deir El-Medina, the city of elite tomb-builders, but he was notorious for his lazy attitude. It would take the forge at least a day to grow hot enough to work with gold; Tuhmose usually lit it at night, an apprentice stoking the flames until dawn in preparation for Tuhmose's work. Hopefully this emergency contract wasn't actually an emergency, because Tuhmose had work to do yet before even laid his hands on gold.

"I see," Meresankh said. "Did you gather your laundry like I asked?"

"It's in my room, by the door." He winked at her. "I know better than to anger you on laundry day."

That got a smile out of her. "As well you should," she said, tossing her head. The beaded tips of her wig cracked when they collided. "I am not to be trifled with!"

The pair chatted, describing their tasks for the day as Meresankh prepared the vegetables and Tuhmose tended the duck. When everything was ready, they ate, the duck's crispy skin crackling sweetly under their teeth. Duck was Meresankh's favorite. Her mood cooled a little as she ate.

When they finished breakfast, Meresankh bid Tuhmose goodbye and gathered the laundry. She took all of it outside before bundling it up and piling it atop her head. A few of the apprentices eyed her, smiling when she passed them on her way out of Tuhmose's property. Tuhmose had a large house, white plaster gleaming in the light of the sun, set in the middle of a massive garden he kept full of flowers and fruit-bearing trees. His forge lay at the far south of the compound, where it could catch the strongest winds that would keep the forge afire for days at a time. Meresankh wasn't a conceited person, but she was thirteen years old, well within marrying age, and she was the only person to whom Tuhmose intended to leave his considerable land and important title. The apprentices all wanted her hand, she was sure. She had proud features, chiseled and slender, and she'd be a true woman in a few years. Prime marriage material. Proposals were not far off, she was sure.

Not that she'd accept a proposal from any man in her village of Thebes, though. The men were all too impetuous and rude for her tastes, cracking foul jokes when they thought she couldn't hear. She deserved better. She'd remain a maid until someone suitable came along, and happily.

The walk down the hill to the Nile wouldn't take long, but Meresankh dawdled on her way, stopping to observe the pomegranate trees in Tuhmose's garden. She picked one of the ripe fruits, tucking the pod into the pocket of her linen kilt. It would make a wonderful, cool snack later in the day, when the sun rose high and hot. Even in winter, the sun beat upon her head with relentless strokes. She thought about that snack with longing as she left the compound and walked down the road toward the Nile's bank. Oh, yes, the pomegranates this time of year were so sweet…

Soon Meresankh left the walls of Tuhmose's compound. She walked down a dirt road for a time, until the road began to slope downward toward the river's basin. There she paused to view the land, spread as it was before her. From that height she could see the Nile stretched out below, arching to the north and south like a silver snake twining its coils through the desert. Across the river she could only just distinguish the crests of the hills denoting the entrance to the Valley of the Kings—sacred ground where common folk like her dared not tread, even if her guardian Tuhmose did forge much of the jewelry worn by the interred pharaohs. If she turned around, she'd see the white mud houses of her neighbors stretching to the west. Tuhmose lived at the outskirts of the city of Thebes, the edge of his property only a few hundred feet from the river's uppermost inundation point...a most coveted plot of land, Meresankh thought with pride.

Because the river was high at the moment, water covering the farmers' fields, the farmers had nothing to do and had been conscripted to the capital, working for the royal stonemasons and architects in exchange for food from the palace's winter stockpiles. When the Nile reached its low point and their land emerged covered in a layer of rich silt, the farmers would return to their fields for planting, growing, and harvesting. That meant the road to the Nile hosted mostly women this time of year, all doing laundry or other washing. Meresankh preferred it that way. She didn't like the stares of the young men, who inevitably leered at the women walking on the road. She nodded to some of the women as she passed down the hill along the road, asking them if they'd heard from their husbands or if their children were well. Many children accompanied their mothers to the river, naked bodies glistening in the sun. Meresankh always smiled at the children, even if she didn't like their mothers.

And Meresankh didn't like all of the mothers. When she reached the Nile, to her immense displeasure she saw a knot of them hunched together at the water's edge, beating lengths of linen with stones and brushes. One of the women raised her head when Meresankh approached. Sharp brown eyes swept Meresankh up and down before ducking back down into her group; the women all started giggling, turning to shot Meresankh surreptitious looks. They were all farmer's wives or farmer's daughters, running the households while their husbands and fathers built for the Pharaoh in the capital.

Meresankh refused to let the gossipmongers upset her. "Hello, Ebhim!" she called to the sharp-eyed ringleader. Meresankh's smile was sweet and sunny. "Good morning, everyone!"

They tossed back a muted chorus of greetings. Meresankh kept her smile in place as she set her washing down a bit further up the bank from their group. She'd brought a stone and a plank of wood with her to use as a washing board and scrubber; she took these out and set up her cleaning station, scanning the river before moving to kneel amid the reeds in the water. The cool water swirled around her thighs, gentle and invigorating. She saw no crocodiles that morning, although several hippopotamuses swam far off in the river's center. She'd have to be mindful of them, keep watch if any of them swam below the surface. Hippos were quick to anger. She counted six in the river. If any disappeared from view, she'd leave the water and hide among the reeds like she'd been taught. Doubtless the other women were keeping similar watch, even as they made conversation.

The other women were silent for a time, but then their conversation resumed.

"…promised to me," one of them giggled. Her name was Alorhim, daughter of a local farmer. "He has such fine eyes. I think I might say yes!"

"But the baker's son has his eye on you too, doesn't he?" said one of the others. "How shall you choose?"

"Oh, I'm not sure," said Alorhim. She looked genuinely torn at that; Meresankh felt a little sorry for her. "They both like me so much."

Ebhim inclined her head, shaved scalp gleaming in the sun. "Choose the richest, obviously."

Alorhim looked unsure. "But—"

"Love is grand, but it doesn't feed your children," Ebhim said, looking down the length of her nose at the other women. When they averted their eyes, not wishing to argue with their leader, Ebhim shot a combative look at Meresankh. "What say you, Meresankh?"

Meresankh said nothing, for a time. Contradicting Ebhim would surely bring about an argument, but she did not agree with the woman about what made a proper husband. In the end, rather than oppose the other woman outright, Meresankh thought it prudent to change the subject. "Choose the one who is most devoted," she said. "He will honor you in marriage, I am sure."

Alorhim's smile was tense; she shot Ebhim a sidelong glance, waiting for the other woman to react before composing her reply. Meresankh soon saw Alorhim was wise to do this.

"What would you know about it?" Ebhim snapped as she took offense with Meresankh's words. She jerked her chin at Meresankh's washing board. "Shouldn't a servant be washing your clothes, anyway?"

Meresankh's cheeks colored. It was true. Tuhmose could afford servants, but he chose not to employ them, leaving Meresankh to do the washing. The implication was that Tuhmose might not be as wealthy as his title and occupation implied. Meresankh hoped that implication would be enough for Ebhim, and that the older woman would cool off now that she'd lobbed an insult.

But Ebhim was not finished. "Coming here in your wigs, with those flashy faïence beads," she said, eyes afire as she looked Meresankh up and down. "What a braggart, you are!"

One of the other women picked up the call. "Yes, braggart!" she agreed. She splashed her hand in the water, sending drops Meresankh's way. "So prideful!"

"What would you know about needing to marry a rich man?" another added. "You know nothing of our struggles to find good husbands. Tuhmose takes care of you!"

"But not very well, it seems." Ebhim cackled like a Nile water bird. "He won't hire her a maid, so she has to do her own laundry!" The woman's dark eyes flashed, venomous like a desert cobra. Her words came soft and biting. "Maybe he regrets adopting you, after all!"

Meresankh couldn't help it. She tossed her washing into the river with a splash and stood, rounding on the other women with fists clenched. They all recoiled, each of them looking regretful—except for Ebhim, of course, who stared at Meresankh with defiance. Meresankh's blood burned hot inside her veins. Ebhim truly knew nothing of Meresankh's situation with Tuhmose, Meresankh's adoptive father and legal guardian, and yet Ebhim spoke with such insulting authority on the matter! Such a slight could not be tolerated. Meresankh held too much love for Tuhmose to allow him to be insulted. He had rescued her off the street, provided her a position with his wife as a maid, and when his wife died, he'd adopted Meresankh for a daughter. Such a kind, generous man would not suffer indignity because of Meresankh. Not if she had anything to say about it.

"Enough!" Meresankh spat at the women. Winter sun beat on her neck and bare chest, stoking the fire of rage inside her like the wind stokes Tuhmose's kiln. "You know nothing of my life! You—"

Meresankh would have continued speaking. She had much more to say, after all. But just then, from behind her, there came a sound like thunder. The other women went still, mouths gaping as Meresankh turned to look.

When she did, her words died upon her tongue.

A column of pale blue light had appeared above the Nile, spearing into the water's depths and arching high into the cerulean expanse of the sky. The column sored so high, Meresankh couldn't see its top. The water glowed a beautiful, deep green where the light pierced it, lit from within like a jewel. With a cry Meresankh held up her hand, shielding her eyes from the brilliant illumination, but then she saw something in the depths of the light a few feet above where it disappeared into the river. Something dark emerged from the heart of the light—no, two somethings, one tall shape and one shorter but wider figure. They gained detail and color as they bloomed from the light's center, and soon Meresankh could see exactly what lay within.

It was a girl. A girl hovered above a gigantic stone slab of golden rock, her feet almost touching it, like a person standing atop a table. The rectangular slab must have weighed many hundreds of _debens_ , and yet it floated within the light like a seed on the wind. Meresankh's breath hissed in her throat. What was this sight she witnessed? And who was the girl in the light, the one with waving hair the color of copper and skin like cool milk? She couldn't discern the girls' features from this distance. The Nile ran wide, here, and the girl in the light was at least a hundred cubits away.

"Look!" Alorhim whispered.

The reeds on the banks shivered, like an unfelt wind had passed through their stems—and then the waters of the Nile bubbled from below, white froth turning the blue waves to pearl. From the depths rose hundreds of green leaves, round and wide, buds of white flowers crowing their centers as they burst into the air. They coated the entire river, shore to shore, stretching far away in all directions and out of Meresankh's sight.

For a moment the river went still, green and calm. Then the budding blossoms trembled, and their petals unfurled as one, blotting out the green leaves with their purity. A carpet of the white flowers as thick as paint coated the surface of the Nile as though placed there for decoration. They looked thick enough to walk upon as their petals stilled, sweet scent permeating the air in a rich cloud.

In an instant, the Nile had turned pure white with sacred lotus blossoms.

"They bloom even in this season?" Ebhim whispered from behind Meresankh's back. Lotus only bloomed when the sun was hot, submerging themselves deep beneath the Nile's waves during the Egyptian winter.

"And so many of them!" another woman added.

"To see so many summer flowers in the dead of winter…" Alorhim murmured.

Meresankh heard a thump, and then another, from behind her. When she turned she saw the women had fallen to their knees, hands clasped as they bowed their heads, praying with quiet voices to their favored gods—Hathor, Sekhmet, Ra, Osiris.

"We witness a miracle!" Ebhim said. She lifted her face toward Meresankh, earlier anger vanished in the wake of awe. "Truly, we witness a miracle!"

Meresankh turned back to the Nile, disliking the look in Ebhim's eyes. Unlike the others, she'd visited the capital before. She'd seen the Pharaoh's high priests work with _heka_ before, harnessing magic to summon monsters and judge the hearts of the impure. This surely was no miracle. Surely they bore witness to some spell or another, not an actual act of the gods above.

But magic had to have a master. Who, therefore, had created this spectacle?

The mysterious, light-born girl hovered another moment above the river, skin like lapis in the column's blue glare—but then the light flickered, the beam that pierced the sky going pale, its color only barely darker than the sky itself. Then it flickered again, and again, before disappearing completely.

When it vanished, the girl and the slab hovered for one final moment in the sky. The, like pebbles dropped by careless hands, both plummeted toward the surface of the water…

…right into the pack of hippopotamus, who had swum toward the light to investigate.

* * *

Many miles upriver, in the capital city of Thinis, Lord Seto, chosen Pharaoh of Egypt, felt the magic of his soul pulse and sway as he sat upon the throne. Before him a commoner was being judged for a crime. One of his newly-appointed High Priests, a tall man named Ranefer, used the Millennium Key to view the man's heart. At the same time Seto felt his magic ripple, Ranefer gasped and dropped the Key most carelessly to the floor. He turned to his Pharaoh with expression dire.

"Sire?" he asked as he recovered the Key, tone urgent.

Seto rose from his throne. The guards snapped to attention when he strode off the dais, heading for the exit that would take him to the balcony overlooking the courtyard. The assembled courtiers and commoners in the throne room bowed when he passed, tittering behind their hands at his odd behavior. It wasn't appropriate for the Pharaoh to leave during the middle of an audience session. How unseemly. Whispers followed Seto as he walked, but he ignored them in favor of more pressing matters.

Let the commoners wonder. He had no time for their small-minded ilk.

"Sire!" Ranefer repeated. The priest followed Seto from the room, every word he spoke straining in his throat. "Sire, what magic do you work? It is like nothing I have felt from you before, and originates from so far away!"

Seto did not answer. He strode purposefully down the hall, heart beating a tattoo inside his chest (but he did not let his trepidation show on his face, of course). Eventually he passed through the archway leading to the balcony—the same balcony where he'd stood to ascend to the throne, the people gathered below to welcome his rise to power. The overlook viewed the whole of the enormous palace courtyard, east-facing to catch the light of a rising sun. Seto did not face east, however. He turned instead to the north, where he felt the magic call to him.

Ranefer, from behind him, gasped: "What is that?"

Far away, spearing the blue of the sky like a needle through linen, a hair's-breadth column of pale azure light split the heavens. It glowed white at the heart, bright and gleaming, and even from a great distance Seto had to squint against its glare. The guards and peasants in the courtyard pointed at the sky, murmuring amongst themselves at the phenomenon. Seto knew what they were asking even before the whispers drifted to his lofty perch upon the balcony.

"What is that light?" someone said with wonder.

"What is causing that?" someone else said with awe.

"Have we another calamity upon ours hands?" whispered a few with fear.

Seto's hand tightened around the hilt of the Millennium Rod. The people had not yet recovered from the devastation wrought by former Priest Akhenaden and his dark master, Zorc Necrophades. The death of the former Pharaoh, Atem, weighed heavy on the hearts of Egypt's citizens. They were not yet accustomed to their new Pharaoh, either, distrustful of Seto and his sudden rise to power. He was not of the royal blood, they claimed, and unfit for the throne despite Atem's dying wish he receive the crown.

How ironic. The commoners had looked upon him with admiration when he, an orphan, had become a High Priest—a man of riches born from rags. Now, though, they thought he had overstepped. Fickle people. He had to suppress a sneer, just thinking about their unsure hearts.

None of them knew Seto's true parentage, of course. No one would believe it if he tried to tell them he was cousin to the previous Pharaoh—and if they did find out, and believe he was the son of the traitor Akhenaden, they'd depose him in an instant.

Akhenaden.

The commoners did not know the truth, that Atem had sealed himself inside the shattered Millennium Puzzle. They merely thought him dead.

Dead, at the hands of Akhenaden.

Akhenaden, Seto's father, the traitor. Killer of Pharaoh Atem.

Seto prayed they never learned the truth, even if a blood tie to the throne would ease his transition into power.

"Sire?" Ranefer was asking. "Sire, what magic is this?"

"I don't know," Seto replied—but he knew why Ranefer asked _him_ , specifically, that question.

The beam of light pulsed with the color of Seto's personal magic. The white core, the pale blue luminescence…the hue was unmistakable. The magic in his heart flickered in time with the column of light, reacting to it the way he'd react to any magic he himself summoned. The magic inside him grew dimmer as the column continued to burn, like his _ba_ was being drained to fuel the far-off light.

Somehow, someone was siphoning the power of his _ba_ to fuel that spell. Seto had no idea who, or how, or for what purpose.

He did not know which question troubled him more.

"Sire?" Ranefer asked again, confused. "Sire, why—"

"Ranefer," Seto said, and the holder of the Key went silent. Seto turned to the priest, blue gaze hooded, eyes smoldering with barely-checked rage beneath the shadow of his crown. "I do not work that magic. Someone is using the force of my _heka_ to create that light, and it is not me."

It was a good thing the common folk did not understand _heka_ , nor knew how to identify the casters of whatever magic they might witness. Because if that column of light boded ill, and the people knew their new, untrusted king had powered it, his reign as Pharaoh would be contested even further still. He knew that for a fact as the anxious whispers in the courtyard rose to cries of outright fear.

Whoever was responsible for this would pay dearly for their impudence.

Seto, Pharaoh of Egypt, clutched the Millennium Rod tight and swore to make them suffer.

* * *

 _NOTES (long ones):_

 _Yay, Seto! Ruthless as always._

 _This takes places after Atem sealed Zorc and his own soul into the Puzzle, and the Puzzle shattered, and Atem passed the throne to Seto. So…Seto is the Pharaoh, per Atem's dying wish. Yaaaay. Sort of. The common folk aren't too happy…but more on that later._

 _Other priests have been recruited to control the remaining Millennium Items, since most priests died during the fight with Zorc…not looking forward to making more OCs, but to fit with canon, I'll have to._

 _I adopted a slightly archaic writing style for this chapter, since characters from the ancient past are narrating. Hope it flowed! We'll return to Daisy's POV shortly._

" _Heka" was the term used in the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga to refer to magic, so that's what I used. No idea if it has actual historical significance. The "ba" is basically the soul._

 _And…welcome to Ancient Egypt. Please allow for some cultural errors. I'm trying my best, but it's hard. The anime says Atem lived 5000 years ago (so, the 2_ _nd_ _Dynasty) but the manga and Japanese anime say 3000 years ago (so, roughly the 20_ _th_ _Dynasty). Ugh! Those periods are TOTALLY DIFFERENT in terms of politics, religion, trade, all sorts of stuff._

 _I've officially set this fic in the 2_ _nd_ _Dynasty. Little is known about that time period, so if magic existed, that's a prime time for it to exist in. The 20_ _th_ _Dynasty is well-documented, so it would be hard for a lost portion of history to take place during that time._

 _I'll likely throw details from many different dynasties into this fic because…well, very little is known about the 2_ _nd_ _Dynasty, so I'm short on real historical details and need to fill in the gaps from somewhere. There are both advantages and disadvantages to setting a story in the 2_ _nd_ _Dynasty, as you can see._

 _Some facts: Life in Ancient Egypt depended on the Nile. When it was at its high point, it covered the farmlands, and farmers had nothing to do but sit and wait for the water to recede and leave behind its rich layer of silt (caring for animals and mending tools only lasted so long). As a result of half the population being out of work for a few months, farmers were often put to work during this time by the Pharaoh, building monuments, roads, and other buildings. Slaves didn't actually do much work of that kind; the idea that slaves alone built the Pyramids, for instance, is a bit of a misconception._

 _Right now it's winter, season of Akhet, and the Nile is at its high point. Farmers are working for the government for the winter since their fields are currently flooded._

 _Tuhmose is a goldsmith, as was mentioned a few times. He'll be important later on, and of course Meresankh will be important from here on out. He's pretty high-class and wealthy, but he's not the type to flaunt it, so he lives modestly with few servants. That's why it's weird for Meresankh to do the washing. Someone of Tuhmose's status should have servants for that._

 _Most women of the upper class shaved their heads and wore wigs. That's why I wrote that detail into Meresankh's character design, given her class. Frustratingly, there's little written about the commoners of Ancient Egypt (most couldn't even read, let alone record details of their daily lives), so I'm having to use details about the royal way of life and tweak them to fit the different classes._

 _Random Cultural Bits: Most women went topless. Kids didn't wear clothes until they hit puberty. People had lots of pairs of underwear, funnily enough. Bread had a lot of sand in it because of the way they ground their bread. Egyptians had very worn/ground-down teeth because of this, but few cavities, because they basically didn't have sugar or sweeteners that rot teeth. Houses were built of plaster, painted white to reflect the sun and dispel heat._

 _And…yeah. More to come. Will explain cultural bits as they come up._

 _MANY THANKS to the reviewers of the previous chapter. I wish more of you would comment, but c'est la vie! I'm grateful people are reading at all. Thank you Guest and FicReader for your comments!_


	8. Chapter 8: Hathnodjmet

Warnings: None

* * *

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 08:

"Hathnodjmet"

* * *

The stone slab hit the Nile before the woman did, water foaming and flinging beneath its massive weight. The woman followed not long after, sinking out of sight beneath the Nile's waves as though she'd never existed in the first place. She surfaced a moment later, head breaking the surface with a yelp Meresankh heard even from her spot on the distant shore.

Meresankh would be yelping, too, if she'd fallen into the middle of a pack of hippos.

The woman in the water didn't seem to notice. Her head bobbed on the waves, dot of her face pale above the blue water, and then one white arm broke the water's surface. The woman paddled forward, arms slowly breaking and then submerging as she made a slow crawl toward the shore. Why she didn't paddle faster, Meresankh couldn't say. If she'd been out there, she'd paddle like Ammut herself snapped at her heels.

Or were the hippos even more frightening that the beast that ate the hearts of the unworthy in the Underworld? The hippos watched the woman swim with their dark eyes, ears flicking in the Egyptian sun—but none of them moved. They simply watched, and waited, as though deciding if the woman in their midst was worth sending to meet Osiris.

Behind Meresankh, the washer-women were still gibbering, praying into their hands as the woman slowly paddled toward the shore. Meresankh held her breath when the woman's arms tangled in the thicket of lotus blossoms covering the Nile. The woman freed herself soon enough, though, and resumed her dawdling paddle. But then she tangled again, and floundered, and floundered more—

Meresankh couldn't take it. The woman wasn't too far from shore. A carved track of clear water snaked behind her, gleaming blue through the floating lotus briar, but it was obvious she had tired and was losing strength. Meresankh offered a quick prayer to the protector of women and children, Bastet, then girded her linen kilt—taking the back flap of fabric, pulling it forward between her knees, and tucking it through the front of her belt—and waded into the river.

"What are you doing?" Ebhim hissed.

Meresankh paid her no attention. She waded as far as she could, batting aside the clinging lotus with her hands, and when her feet left the river's muddy bottom and the tangle of lotus roots atop it, she swam the last few feet to the struggling woman. She was just in time, too. As soon as she reached for the woman, her pale face slipped beneath the waves with a strangled gasp.

Luckily Tuhmose had taught Meresankh to swim when she was a child. She grasped the woman's arm, hauled her to the surface, and buoyed up the woman's body with her own. It took every ounce of strength she had, but Meresankh kicked her feet and paddled with her free arm and dragged the woman through the waves, toward the shore. When she was able to stand, she got her feet under her and clamped her arms around the woman's waist.

"Help me!" she screamed, straining against the lotus' grabbing roots. "Help us!"

Her cries snapped the other women from their trance. They dashed into the water and pulled Meresankh, as well as the unnamed woman, to the shore. Meresankh did not rest once she set foot upon dry soil, though. She rolled the naked women onto her back and slapped at her cheeks. When the woman's eyes fluttered, and she groaned, Meresankh sighed. Then she pressed her ear to the woman's chest. She heard no wet sounds within, merely the rise and fall of dry breath. She hadn't swallowed water. Thank Ra!

As Meresankh lifted her ear away, a flash of gold caught her eye. The woman wasn't naked. Around her neck she wore a golden collar, a flat metal piece secured around the neck by a short length of chain. Symbols etched into the metal burned black against the luminous gold, but while Meresankh recognized the symbols as the Egyptian form of writing, she could not read the words. She hadn't been taught how to read yet, though Tuhmose had promised to teach her soon.

Meresankh didn't have time to study the necklace further. Shadows fell over her, chilling her wet skin.

"Who is she?"

"Where did she come from?"

"What was that beautiful light?"

Some of these voices belonged to Meresankh's friends. Others did not. When she looked up, she saw that many others had gathered around in a tight knot, men and women and children alike drawn to the river by the column of pale blue light. They stared at the nearly-nude woman with wonder, awe—and fear.

"The hippos did not attack her," someone murmured.

"The lotus bloomed to herald her arrival," said someone else

"It's a miracle," said Ebhim. She gazed at the woman through bright, devoted eyes. "A miracle, truly. Wrought by the goddess Hathor, no doubt!"

Hathor, the goddess who took the form of a hippo. Of course that's the goddess to whom Ebhim would ascribe this event. Now was no time for prayer, however. Meresankh stood up, went to her bundle of washing, and pulled a blanket from the pile. She laid it out next to the naked woman and rolled her atop it. The woman didn't protest, but she did groan.

She also opened her eyes.

Meresankh sucked down a breath. So did the other onlookers who were close enough to see the woman's eyes, as green as a lotus stem. Meresankh didn't pause to marvel at this exotic feature. She looked sharply at Ebhim and the others, and grabbed one corner of the blanket.

"Help me carry her," she commanded. "Tuhmose will know what to do."

* * *

The woman lay still and quiet on her back. She breathed evenly, though shallowly. She did not stir even when Meresankh laid a wet cloth across her pale brow.

The woman had a fever, low but persistent.

"Tell me what happened," said Tuhmose. He sat near the door of the small room, chewing on a bone from the duck they'd eaten for breakfast. "Tell me what happened at the river."

Meresankh shot him an annoyed look. She'd already told him the details three times. The woman had appeared in the sky in a beam of light alongside a stone slab. Then lotus blossoms covered the entire river. When the light disappeared, the stone and the woman fell. The hippos ignored the woman, but the villagers did not. A crowd of them had followed Meresankh and the others when they took the woman into Tuhmose's compound. This crowd still waited at the gate, three hours after the event transpired.

"You already know everything," she said crossly. "Go talk to Ebhim if you think I'm leaving anything out. She saw it all. She'd be happy to tell you."

Ignoring Tuhmose, Meresankh wet another cloth and draped it across the woman's forehead. She'd been watching over the woman for the past hours, waiting for her to wake up and explain how she'd come to appear inside that beam of light. The woman showed no sign of waking—probably thanks to the fresh but clotted gash on her temple. The wound wasn't deep, but a dark bruise surrounded the cut like someone had smeared the woman's head with soot. She hadn't gotten that wound in the river, which meant she'd received the wound before appearing in the beam of light.

"Where do you think she comes from?" Meresankh muttered. "I've never seen eyes like these."

"I have," said Tuhmose. "When I lived in the capital. Men from the far north, beyond even the sea, had eyes of blue and green, and skin as pale as hers."

Meresankh considered this a moment. Tuhmose had lived in the capital for many years, apprenticed to the goldsmiths who decorated the tombs of the pharaohs themselves. He'd travelled there even recently to decorate the tomb of Honored Pharaoh Atem, may Osiris guard his soul. The capital was a cosmopolitan place, full of foreign mysteries. It comforted Meresankh to know others with eyes like these existed. It meant the woman wasn't a special miracle woman, after all, but rather merely a foreigner. One caught up in magic, of course, but a mere foreigner nonetheless.

"Do you think she was a noblewoman?" Meresankh asked. She lifted one of the woman's hands off the straw-stuffed pallet. "Look."

Tuhmose leaned in close. Through the light of the lone window, the woman's skin glowed luminous and pale. Her smooth, supple fingertips felt soft against Meresankh's weathered palms. She had not a single callous to speak of, like she hadn't worked with her hands for a single moment of her life. And the woman but be at least sixteen. To have avoided work for so long indicated she was of the upper class, surely. If Meresankh were the vain sort, she was sure she'd feel quite self-conscious of her hands next to this woman.

Tuhmose studied the hands for a moment. Then he lifted the edge of the blanket covering the woman's body, revealing her feet.

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not." He nodded at the feet. "I noticed when you brought her in. Look."

In stark contrast to the woman's hands, her feet were an amalgamation of calluses, blisters, and wear. Her feet had gnarled toes, knobbly joints, and corded muscle thick from constant use. Blisters glistened with clear fluid; bruises on the toes were green, halfway healed but not quite cured. These were the feet of a worker. There was no question of that. But what occupation left the hands so soft, and the feet so damaged? What kind of woman, noble or otherwise, was this girl?

She was no great beauty, though her heart-shaped face had pleasing symmetry and her smooth skin had never seen the brutal sun. She'd be much prettier with her eyes open, to showcase their rare color. Her hair was nice enough, however. Auburn and wavy, it was quite unlike the straight black hair of most Egyptian women. Yes, she'd be much prettier with her eyes open to contrast her hair. Maybe if she got a little color in her pale cheeks, put some kohl on her pink lips…

"She has to be a noblewoman," Meresankh said. She pointed at the golden necklace on the woman's collarbone. "No commoner would possess such a thing."

"Yes. And the gold was forged with a technique I do not recognize." Tuhmose pursed his lips. "But if she is a foreigner, why is her collar inscribed with Egyptian text?"

Meresankh had no answer for that, aside from: "Perhaps the text itself will tell us. Have you read the writing yet?"

He shook his head. "I dislike the thought of disturbing her while she rests. She's fighting fever. She needs none of my meddling. But I may look when she seems deeply asleep."

Meresankh touched the woman's forehead. It burned hot beneath her hand. "This fever worries me," said Meresankh. "We need the doctor, I think."

Tuhmose left the room. When he returned he had a copper bit in his hand. He passed this to Meresankh; she stowed it in the pocket of her kilt.

"Get one of the apprentices to fetch him," Tuhmose said. "They're at the gates, keeping people out." He looked quite serious when he added, "Be discreet. I'm told the entire village is talking about this. No need to excite them further."

Meresankh nodded, then got up and left the room. The sprawling house was silent, all the apprentices and workers down by the gates. She left the house, walked past Tuhmose's workshop, and approached the gate on the edge of the property. A crowd waited just beyond the stone archway and long stone wall, eagerly peering past the wooden gate between the slats of the frame and the apprentices' broad shoulders. One of the men broke away from the rest when she came near—L'tor, one of the groundskeepers, a few years younger than she.

"I need someone to fetch the village doctor," Meresankh said. She pressed the copper piece into his hand. "Be quick, and I'll give you an extra onion with your dinner."

He nodded, excited at this prospect, and whispered to the other men. They opened the gate enough for him to squeeze through. Some of the villagers tried to surge forward, but he was quick and none made it into the compound. Good. Meresankh turned to leave, pleased.

"Meresankh!"

She turned at the sound of her name. Ebhim and the other washing women had wormed their way through the crowd and right up to the gate, stretching their arms through the slats. Ebhim's black eyes were accusing.

"Where is Hathnodjmet?" she asked. "Is she well?"

Meresankh frowned. The name meant 'beloved of Hathor,' but she knew no one who bore that title. When Ebhim repeated the question, however, Meresankh realized who she meant: the woman from the river. Of _course_ Ebhim would give her the name 'Hathnodjmet.' She had claimed the woman's appearance was a miracle of Hathor's doing, after all.

"She is well, but a doctor needs to examine her," Meresankh said. She glanced at the crowd, all of whom looked curious—and perhaps a little desperate to see the miracle woman. Days were dark in the wake of Pharaoh Atem's death. The people thirsted for miracles in these troubles times. No doubt Ebhim had been spreading rumors of Hathnodjmet to already-perceptive ears…perhaps for her own selfish benefit. Ebhim had always been hungry for power and prestige.

"Has she said anything?" Ebhim demanded. "Is she sent by the gods? Has she a message for us? Tell us!"

The other villagers quieted at the sound of Ebhim's questions. They waited, staring at Meresankh and Ebhim in turns. Clearly they had listened to Ebhim while Meresankh was elsewhere.

"She surely is a gift from the gods," Ebhim continued. "She has been sent be a balm for these dark times. Already the apothecaries are gathering the lotus she conjured, to treat disease and cure wounds. Already the lotus has eased hunger in this barren winter. Already she has brought healing in her wake." Ebhim pressed even closer to the gate's bars. "The embodiment of Hathor belongs to the people. She was sent here for us. Let us see her!"

'The embodiment of Hathor.' What a formal, mystical, _ridiculous_ title. Much as Meresankh disliked the overly reverent name, borne of superstition and misconception (the woman sleeping in Tuhmose's house was just a girl!), she heard the name whispered by the crowd over and over again. Embodiment of Hathor. Beloved of Hathor. Truly Ebhim's gossiping nature had outdone itself in the past few, scant hours.

This wasn't all misfortune, though. Ebhim's loose tongue could be used to Meresankh's advantage—and to the newly-named Hathnodjmet, who slept feverishly within the walls of Tuhmose's house.

"Ebhim," Meresankh said. She drew close to the gate and took the other woman's hands in hers, clasping them tight as she spoke in a voice only Ebhim could hear. "Ebhim, I need your help."

Ebhim frowned, suspicious. "My help?"

"Yes. You seem to know what Hathnodjmet was sent for." Ebhim was lying through her teeth; she prayed the gods would forgive her for this. "You are wise in these matters. So, I must ask you one question."

Ebhim's frown deepened. "What question?"

"I, too, believe Hathnodjmet was sent to aid us in these dark times," Meresankh lied, "but wouldn't it trouble her to know the people who wish her well are leaving their work unattended, to stand vigil at Tuhmose's gates?"

Ebhim's eyes widened. Clearly she had not considered this.

"Hathor is the goddess of a woman's fertility and domestic work, after all," Meresankh said. "She would not want hearths to go cold on her account, yes?"

"It…would seem so," Ebhim said, considering Meresankh's words.

"Would it trouble her to know that hands have fallen idle on her account? Tell me, for I do not know."

"Yes," Ebhim said, with budding conviction. "Yes, it would."

"I knew it. Thank you, Ebhim." Meresankh released Ebhim's hands and stepped back, speaking loudly for all to hear. "Hathnodjmet is well, but she needs rest. She has requested time to recuperate in calming solitude." This wasn't exactly true, of course. The mysterious woman did need rest, but she hadn't actually asked for it in such specific terms. "Please honor her wishes and return to your work."

Some of the villagers protested at this, but Ebhim turned and addressed the crowd.

"Hathor is the goddess of the fertile lands, of workers and their toil!" she said. "Therefore, the embodiment of Hathor would delight in our productivity. We must not stand idly by while she rests!"

Ebhim turned to Meresankh and smiled. Then she walked with head held high through the crowd, back to the village and her abandoned work. The others hesitated, then followed their leader, whispering that she had made a valid point. They must not disappoint the embodiment of Hathor, the goddess's emissary made flesh. Not if she was indeed to help them in their time of trouble.

Meresankh smirked. She had manipulated Ebhim, and her followers, beautifully.

* * *

Tuhmose sat at the woman's side when Meresankh returned to the room. He had a bit of leather in his hand, as well as an awl. A slender bone needle and a length of hemp cord sat at his side. He cut at the leather as he stared at the woman, a troubled look on his face.

"You'll never guess what the villagers are calling her," Meresankh said.

Tuhmose favored her with a quizzical expression.

"Hathnodjmet," Meresankh said, voice dripping with disdain. "The embodiment of Hathor. Hathor made flesh. How fanciful!"

Tuhmose snorted, but then he looked pensive. "Let them call her what they wish," he said eventually. "Rumor, much though I hate it, might provide her some protection."

Meresankh frowned. "Protection?"

He nodded, scraping at the leather with the awl. "She treads on uncertain ground," he said. "I wonder if she even knows."

Meresankh didn't know what he meant, but then Tuhmose held the leather in his hand toward the woman. He had cut it into the shape of the pendant she wore.

"I read her necklace while you were gone," he said. "It bodes her, and us, ill."

Meresankh's heart stuttered and beat faster. "What kind of ill?"

"I won't tell you. It's better you not know. If trouble befalls us, I will be the only one blamed."

Meresankh bit back a retort. She wanted to know; she hated being left out. But the look in Tuhmose's eye booked no argument. He hadn't appeared so dire since the Pharaoh Atem died, and he had to return to the mason's village of Deir El-Medina in the Valley of the Kings to prepare the funerary tomb.

"Can you at least tell me what this is about?" she asked. "So I may be prepared, should that trouble you mentioned decide to pay us a visit."

Tuhmose snorted, laughing at her wording. "I suppose I could do that." He pointed at the necklace. "A spell of protection lies over this woman."

"A spell?"

"Yes. Watch."

He reached for the necklace and clasped his fingers around the flat pendant in the front. Then he gave the necklace a sharp tug. Meresankh gasped when the necklace erupted with a cascade of pale blue sparks that burned white at their heart. They arced off the pendant, skittering over Tuhmose's hand with a crackle and a hiss.

"It merely stings when I touch either her or the pendant even a little roughly, but if I tried harder, I'm sure the results would be quite painful," Tuhmose said, shaking his hand free of the sparks. "This is a powerful protection spell. And the pendant names its master."

"Who is it?"

"That I will not say." Tuhmose set aside the awl and picked up the needle and cord. "The pendant claims she is connected to a powerful person, but I know for a fact that connection does not exist. I will not say why, or how. But if certain people discover her with this pendant, she will surely be in danger."

Tuhmose placed the leather on the front of the pendant, then used the needle and cord to bind it tightly in place against the metal ornament. The leather covered the necklace's inscription entirely, and obscured the gold from view. The necklace looked less rich, more ordinary, as a result.

"Meresankh," Tuhmose said. His dark eyes burned serious at his adopted daughter. "That necklace was forged with a technique I do not understand, under circumstances I understand even less. Tell no one of it, and let no one see it. And do not let the people forget her. The more they come to care for her, the more protection she will have." He stared at the woman, somber gaze hooded. "If those named on the pendant come for her, her ties to the people will keep her from being spirited away in the night. The villagers will question if she disappears. Infamy is her only armor. And in this place, where she is a stranger in a strange land, infamy may be the only protection she ever has."

Suddenly, Meresankh was glad for Ebhim's rumor-mongering. If Tuhmose spoke the truth (and in this matter Meresankh was sure he would not lie) Ebhim may have just saved the mysterious woman's life—from dangers so dire, Tuhmose wasn't even willing to give them a name.

Meresankh glanced at the sleeping woman in the corner.

This stranger had secrets. Hopefully they brought peace, and not disaster, in Hathnodjmet's wake.

* * *

The doctor forced a tincture of lotus, feverfew, and yarrow down Hathnodjmet's throat. "Keep her cool, and make her drink this three times a day until her fever breaks," he instructed Meresankh. "Fetch me when she wakes. Until then, all you can do is wait. Her health is in her hands, now, and in the hands of the gods."

For three days and nights, Meresankh and Tuhmose watched over the woman who had appeared above the river. Her eyes fluttered when they made her drink the doctor's medicine or bland duck broth, but she never spoke—not in a language Meresankh understood. Hathnodjmet, when gripped by the worst of the fever, ranted and raved, thrashing on her pallet, speaking in at least two languages. Tuhmose recognized neither of them, but they were distinct enough to differentiate. Meresankh couldn't understand any of the babble, but the woman repeated one strange word—"ahn-zoo"—over and over again. Meresankh had no idea what it meant, but the woman seemed troubled by whatever it was. So, Meresankh sang to her, all the lullabies she'd learned as a child from Tuhmose's deceased wife. These seemed to calm Hathnodjmet. She gripped Meresankh's hand, wavy hair matted with sweat, and at times even hummed along, though tunelessly.

Her fever broke on the morning of the fourth day. Dawn had not yet risen in the east. Meresankh found the woman sprawled across her pallet, breathing even and slow, face finally free of its tense lines. Meresankh ran wet cloths down the woman's arms and chest to cleanse away the sweat. As she began to wash Hathnodjmet's stomach, the woman jerked away from Meresankh, scooting off the pallet and onto the floor.

Meresankh looked up. The woman's eyes were open, wide and black in the light of Meresankh's single candle. She backed away on her hands until her back hit the wall, staring at Meresankh as though she had glimpsed a window into the afterlife. The woman said something, but Meresankh didn't understand what.

"Hello," Meresankh said. She set aside her bowl of water and the washing rag. "You are safe here. My name is Meresankh. What is yours?"

The woman didn't answer, or appear to understand (so she didn't speak Egyptian; definitely a foreigner). She stared, brow knit with confusion, then looked around the room. Her eyes opened wide. A glimmer of dark green betrayed panic and fear.

"I mean you no harm," Meresankh said.

The woman said something, words loud and long and frantic. Meresankh tried to speak to her, to comfort her, but the woman shook her head and repeated one particular word over and over.

"I don't understand," Meresankh said. "Do you speak Egyptian?"

Hathnodjmet did not reply. She looked around the room again—and then she looked at her body. She shrieked and wrapped her arms around her torso…no, around her breasts. She clamped her legs tightly together, too, then reached for the blanket on her abandoned pallet. This she wrapped around her shoulders, gripping it as though she were drowning and it could keep her above water. How odd. It was customary for women to bathe together, and in public in the river. Women only covered their chests when it was cold. Why did this woman feel shame and embarrassment when seen naked? To Meresankh, it made little sense. Hathnodjmet was muscular and thin. Not the ideal feminine body in Egypt, which culture dictated should be plump and curved, but there was nothing shameful about her figure, either.

Meresankh reached for Hathnodjmet, to comfort her. This was not the correct move. Hathnodjmet flinched, rose unsteadily to her feet, then bolted for the door. She stumbled, however, on legs that did not remember how to walk. Meresankh followed, trying to grab Hathnodjmet to help her upright, but the woman shrieked and pulled away. Cursing, Meresankh grabbed her candle and pursued the woman down the hall.

The woman stumbled through the large house, darting into each room she came across. In each one she looked around, seemed upset by the clean reed floors and plaster walls, and then travelled to the next room in search of…whatever it was she searched for. Her eyes grew wider and wider, until she finally found a door to the outside and ventured beneath the pre-morning sky. Something about the garden outside Tuhmose's house upset her even more. She gave a strangled cry of confusion and flat-out ran past the palms, the tiled reflection pool, and the delicate winter flowers, toward the wall of the compound visible beyond the garden's low stone fence. Meresankh followed in the woman's wake. The woman ran to the wall, looked down its length in either direction, then went to a date tree near the wall—and climbed it as nimbly as an acrobat, using it to lever herself over and onto the other side of the barrier. Meresankh's mouth opened in shock, but she girded her kilt and climbed the tree, too. She hadn't climbed a tree since she was a small child, but at least this one had low branches and many handholds. She did not know where Hathnodjmet intended to go, but she would not let her go there alone.

Once on the other side of the wall, Meresankh spotted Hathnodjmet. She'd run to the east, up the road toward Thebes itself. She hadn't gotten far, though. She stood at the top of the hill overlooking the city, her blanket still held tight around her, silhouetted by the first glimmers of the sun as it rose on the horizon. Royal blue streaked the black sky, stars burning bright around Hathnodjmet's motionless silhouette. Meresankh darted toward her. Her legs burned as she pelted along the road's uphill slant.

"Come back to the compound," Meresankh said when she reached Hathnodjmet's side. She grabbed the woman's elbow and tugged. "Come quickly before someone—oh!"

Hathnodjmet was crying.

Meresankh was right. Hathnodjmet was much prettier with her eyes open. Her wavy hair hung messy around her pale face, eyes large and bright and swimming with tears. Her lips trembled when she looked at Thebe's sprawl, at the torches lit in the windows of the mud-brick huts, at the laundry hung to dry on lines in the night air, at the man herding a knot of lowing cattle up the road toward them. The city was peaceful this time of night. Peaceful and beautiful. The white-painted houses glowed in the light of the bright moon. The lamps and torches burned like fallen stars.

Why did this tranquil scene bring tears to Hathnodjmet's eyes?

Meresankh did not receive an answer. Hathnodjmet merely crumpled to her knees on the dirt road, crying out in her unknown tongue. Meresankh knelt and gathered the woman against her torso like she would a sobbing child. It seemed like the thing to do in that moment, and her instincts did not misguide her. The woman pressed her face to Meresankh's chest and wailed. Meresankh stroked her auburn hair and murmured comforts. She hoped Hathnodjmet would understand her tone even if the words were lost in her foreign ears.

Eventually the woman quieted. She sniffed and drew away from Meresankh, eyes red and puffy from crying. Meresankh smiled, and cupped the woman's face in her hands. The woman gave her a curious glance, trepidation plain on her pale features. Meresankh merely wanted the woman's attention, however, and when she had it, she spoke.

"My name is Meresankh," Meresankh said. She placed a hand on her chest. "Meresankh. Meresankh. That is my name. Meresankh."

Hathnodjmet looked at the hand, then at Meresankh's face. Then she said, "Meresankh?" She pointed at Meresankh hesitantly. "Meresankh."

"Yes!" said Meresankh. She pressed her hand to Daisy's chest, atop the concealing blanket. "You?" It was time for the woman to have a real name, and not the ridiculous title superstitious villagers had saddled her with. She put her hand on her chest, said her name, then put it on the woman's chest again. "You?"

Hathnodjmet hesitated, but despite the language barrier, Meresankh's question soon sank home. The woman pressed her hand to Meresankh's chest and said the Egyptian woman's name. Then she put her hand on her own chest.

"Daisy," she said. "Daisy."

Meresankh had never heard a name like that before. Even so, it was much, much nicer than the over-wrought 'Hathnodjmet.' Meresankh committed the name to memory in an instant. Daisy. Day-zee. Pretty, in its own way, of not a little odd.

It suited its odd owner perfectly.

* * *

 _NOTES:_

 _And thus, Daisy has arrived._

 _We return to her POV shortly. We're going to see more of Seto from here on out, too, so that's fun!_

 _Things are pretty self-explanatory so far. People think Daisy is some sort of miracle after seeing that magical event, which makes sense. But what's up with her necklace, and who might she be connected to? More to come soon! Let me know if you have a guess in a review._

 _MANY THANKS to those who reviewed previously: Bruja Chess, Guest (x2), and Vaporeonnn! You rock my world. I do a lot of research for this fic, and hearing from you really makes the effort worth it._


	9. Chapter 9: One of Three

Warnings: None

* * *

Where Even Flowers Bloom

Chapter 09:

"One of Three"

* * *

The way I figured it, one of three things was happening to me.

Option One: I was in some remote corner of Egypt that didn't have phones, running water, or even the occasional handheld radio. Nobody seemed to speak English (let alone French) and even though the nearest city was pretty big, not a single powerline or generator was in residence. Even pantomiming a phone got me nowhere. Egypt is a way more developed country than the media leads people to believe, but I wasn't ignorant enough to think rural Egyptian people wouldn't know what a phone was. Still—could there actually be a village so remote (despite its position on the Nile River), no one could recognize the nigh universal signal for phone?

Maybe. Or maybe Option Two was to blame for all of this.

I mean, think about it. The last place I'd been was a museum full of ancient Egyptian artifacts, and then I'd been hit on the head by…something. A bullet fragment? Still wasn't entirely sure. But here I was, in a really antique version of Egypt that resembled all the stuff I'd seen in that museum, after getting a pretty good bump to the head. Add all that together, and…well, was this place even _real_?

Could all of this be a dream? Was I lying unconscious in a hospital bed somewhere, hallucinating?

It was certainly a more plausible scenario than Option Three.

Option Three was too insane for me to entertain. I mean, way too insane. So insane, it was certifiable. But the utter lack of technology was too widespread, and everything really did resemble what I'd seen and heard in the museum, and there were these weird symbols carved into the doorframe of the room where I was staying…

Symbols that looked almost exactly like ancient hieroglyphics…

But no. No way. There was no way I'd travelled back in time to Ancient Egypt. Much more likely this was all a hallucination, or a really vivid dream, or I was lost in a super remote corner of the country. Yeah. Of course. That had to be it.

But if this was all a dream…why did it feel so _real_?

And why, pray tell, was the city I found myself in called Thebes—the ancient name for the modern city of Luxor?

#

I woke to a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, blinking up into the small, tan face of the girl named Meresankh. For a moment I felt utterly confused, but then I remembered: the museum, the thieves, and then darkness followed by bright light and cold water. Strange voices, a fever, waking in a foreign place. Running to the top of a hill and seeing the city—the city without powerlines, antenna, or anything even remotely modern—spread about below me. Then Meresankh taking me by the hand to her house, where I'd stayed ever since waking in this strange world.

Right. Egypt. That's where I was.

You'd think after two weeks I'd be accustomed to my situation, but I wasn't. Far from it. I scooted on my butt toward the wall, watching as Meresankh set two earthenware bowls near my pallet. She smiled, then opened the window's wooden shutters. My room only had one window. It was tiny, cut right into the mud brick wall above my sleeping pallet. Through it I could see that town, the one with the mud houses and the palm trees and the distinct lack of anything technological whatsoever. The one Meresankh indicated was called Thebes.

"Eat," she said, gesturing at the bowl. Meresankh was definitely younger than me, but her eyes were stern, if not kind. "Duck. You like duck."

She spoke a language I had not, at first, recognized. It wasn't Arabic, that's for sure. I couldn't speak Arabic fluently, granted, but I recognized what it sounded like and could manage a few cursory phrases. Her language was a bit more mellifluous, and I didn't recognize the grammatical cadence of it at all. Still, living with her for two weeks had been enough time for me to learn some basic, toddler-level vocabulary. "Eat" and "duck" and "you" and "like" (at least I think that's what that verb meant), for instance.

"Thank you," I said. I'd learned to say that early on, not wanting to alienate the person feeding, clothing, and housing me. I pulled the bowls over and looked inside. One contained thick white milk. The other held bread, chunks of meat, fire-blistered vegetables, and a clutch of pearl onions. Same as always. Meresankh literally brought me _whole onions_ to eat. They were sweet, but I hated the way they made my breath smell, so I stuck to the bread and the meat. Only the bread was really thick and gritty, and it made my teeth ache. I soaked it in the milk and ate it like gruel.

While I ate, Meresankh gathered up my sleeping pallet and folded it before putting it inside a wooden box in the corner. Then she took the chamber pot (no plumbing here) and left the room. I was still embarrassed that she was dumping out that pot every day for me, but I tried not to think about it as I ate my breakfast. Early morning sun eked in through the open window, turning the reed-covered floor a dusky red.

Once I finished eating, I stood and went to the window. From it I had a clear view of the white wall encompassing this house and the surrounding property. There appeared to be a pretty elaborate garden around the house. I hadn't seen much of it. Hadn't really left the room since I got here, to be honest. Only twice had I gone outside it, in fact: the first time when I saw the city, and the second time when I saw the crowd.

I shuddered at that memory. The first few days here had been tense. I'd mainly slept, cowering whenever Meresankh—and, once, a middle-aged man with a shaved head—came into the room. When I finally calmed down enough to wonder if I was being held captive, I bolted, ran out of the house, and sprinted through a section of the garden toward…well, wherever. Anywhere but there, was my thinking.

I wound up finding a gate to the world beyond the house and the surrounding property. I grinned manically when I saw it, but then when I came close I realized there was a whole crowd of people outside it. They started yelling when I drew near, reaching through the gate's wooden slats toward me, calling out the same word over and over. I didn't know what "Hathnodjmet" meant. Even so, I doubted it meant anything good. I stared at them, frozen with uncertainty, as the crowd surged forward so hard the gate actually groaned and buckled. There must've been fifty people outside the gate—and they were all staring right at me with the same awed, desperate expression.

How weird. It was the kind of look you wore when you saw something important—not a look anyone had ever given to _me_.

Meresankh appeared not long later, thankfully. She took me back inside, hands firm on my elbows, and murmured softly in my ear when I started to cry. I wound up clinging to her like she was my sister or something.

From then on, my fear of her vanished.

Back in the present, I heard footsteps near the doorway. I turned, expecting Meresankh, but instead I saw someone else. About my height, bald head gleaming with what appeared to be oil, he stared at me through dark eyes before bowing from the waist. Meresankh stood behind him. She looked apprehensive, but sure of herself.

"Tuhmose," said the man. He placed a hand on his chest. "My name is Tuhmose. I am—"

I didn't catch what he said next. I didn't know the words, and my heart had started beating pretty frantically in my chest, so I was also too distracted to pay close attention. He spoke for a moment or two before falling silent. His lips pursed, like I'd done something he didn't like. Oh no. What had I done?

Meresankh slipped past him. Smiling, she put her hand in mine and gave my fingers a light squeeze.

"It's all right," she said. She'd said that so many times, I knew what it meant. "Tuhmose is my—"

The rest of it was lost on me. I helplessly shook my head when she stopped talking. For a minute she frowned, but then her eyes cleared. She held up her left hand and said a word. Then she held up her right and said a different word. Then she dragged both hands downward through the air, joined her hands together, and turned the motion into the sign for rocking a baby in her arms. She repeated the words and the motions a few times before pointing at Tuhmose, saying the left-hand word, then pointing at herself and saying the baby word.

It clicked: A mother and father coming together to produce a child. And if Meresankh was the baby in this equation, then Tuhmose…

Tuhmose was her _father_. And the other word must mean "mother."

"You should join a pantomime troupe," I muttered. Then I pointed at Tuhmose and repeated the "father" word. Then I gestured at her and repeated the "child" word. Meresankh nodded, grinning, but then I repeated the "mother" word. I held up my hands in the universal "where is it?" gesture.

Meresankh's smile faded. Behind her, Tuhmose looked pained. Meresankh looked away, down at her feet.

"Dead," she said.

She didn't have to pantomime anything for me to know what that word meant. Her expression, and Tuhmose's, gave me all the context I needed.

Of course, I had no idea what to say when I heard that. And even if I'd known what to say, I didn't have the vocabulary to say it. In lieu of speaking, I put a hand on Meresankh's shoulder and gave her a sympathetic smile.

"Sorry," I said. I'd learned that word early on. "So sorry, about your mother."

I knew my grammar must be terrible, but even so, Meresankh smiled. She looped her arm through mine and tugged me out of the room.

We went to Tuhmose's quarters after that. They were like mine, only bigger and with actual furniture. A carved wooden bed with a stuffed mattress, even a writing desk—it was clear he was the lord of this house, or at least in charge around here. He bade me sit in a chair near the door while he and Meresankh talked. I couldn't understand much of what they said, but I knew they were talking about me. They kept looking at me, after all, and gesturing at me (as though I wasn't in the room and could see it, I might add). Eventually Tuhmose pulled a long sheet of paper from a chest beneath the desk. He also removed a long object made out of a reed, and a small pot with a cork stopper. I soon realized these were writing tools, when he dipped the pen in the pot and wrote something on the paper.

Meresankh approached, then. She knelt at my feet and took my hands in hers. Then, gentle, she lifted one hand and brushed it along the necklace at my throat.

"Keep hidden," she said.

She'd told me that before, to keep the necklace hidden. I hadn't been sure why, at first—and then I'd tried to take the necklace off. The thing wouldn't budge. The links at the back, where there had once been a hook, appeared to have fused together…but that wasn't nearly the weirdest thing about the object.

The day after I woke up, I'd noticed the little leather cover someone had put on the pendant. Not knowing why that was there, I tried to take the necklace off entirely—but when I'd wrapped my fist around it and yanked, an electric shock had resonated up my arm. That made me panic, of course, and yank all the harder, but I only got another shock for my trouble. Every time I got rough with the necklace, it shocked me. Once I even saw a blue flash of sparks skitter across my fingertips when I pulled my hand away.

So the necklace was…weird. I wasn't about to call it magic or anything (even if Option Three was real, I wasn't ready to talk about magic) but it was definitely weird.

I hadn't argued about keeping the thing a secret again.

"Tuhmose protect you," Meresankh said. She gestured at him; he was still writing at that desk. "Need one thing, first."

"What is it?"

"Your father," she said. "Dead?"

I blinked at her. Why was she asking me that, of all things?

"We need to know," Meresankh said. "Is your father dead?"

I stared at her for a second, because yeah, my father was dead—in the sense that he was _dead to me_. He was alive in a literal sense, but we didn't have a relationship. I felt no guilt in saying he was dead. If my current situation was Option Three, or even Option Two, it's not like he was around to dispute a claim that he was dead, anyway. But why was Meresankh asking me this?

"Yes. Dead," I told her. "Why?"

She looked relieved, then. It wasn't until tension drained from her face that I realized she'd looked tense in the first place. Rather than answer my question, she turned and addressed Tuhmose in rapid Egyptian (or whatever language she was speaking). He listened to her for a moment, then shot me a smile. There was something fragile about that smile, though. An odd tightness around the eyes, a sense of apology I didn't understand.

"Daisy."

I looked down. Meresankh smiled up at me, then cupped my cheek in her brown palm.

"Tuhmose—my father," she said. "And _your_ father, now."

It took me a minute to muddle through her meaning. When it sank in, my mouth parted in surprise. What did she mean, Tuhmose was my father now? Is that why she asked if my own father was dead?

"You and I, sisters," she continued. Her thumb caressed the skin below my eye. "To protect you, we must do this."

"But why?" I asked.

"To keep you safe. To keep you hidden."

I wanted to protest. I wanted to tell Meresankh and Tuhmose that I had no intention of joining a family that was not my own. It was preposterous, the notion I'd be…adopted? Was that the word? I was seventeen years old in a foreign land, but that didn't mean I needed to be adopted—

Then I saw the way they were both looking at me.

I saw the worry, the fear in their eyes.

And I knew that thanks to my inability to speak with them, there was far more going on than they were able to tell me about.

"We will keep you safe," Meresankh murmured. She stroked a hand over my hair, comforting and sisterly. "You are my sister, now, and Tuhmose's daughter. And we will keep you safe."

I couldn't know if she was telling the truth. I couldn't know if becoming her sister, in whatever way she meant, was a good idea. But somehow—despite my most logical efforts, despite my sense of self-preservation, despite everything in me screaming that this couldn't be happening, _none of this was real_ —I felt myself believe her.

Believing her, it turns out, was a wise choice.

But I wouldn't learn that for a long time.

* * *

 _NOTES :_

 _Not much to say. We see Seto next chapter._

 _Happy belated birthday to Seto Kaiba. His birthday was the 25th, apparently._

 _Very grateful to those who reviewed, and would love to hear more from y'all._


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